This MA historiography seminar addresses the emergence and transformations of the Mediterranean as an historical object. The first part of the course will give an overview of Mediterranean historiographies: we will meet with historians who have characterized this geographical space as a border zone between continents, and those who searched its shared features in climate and ecology, human interaction, social traditions, and historical memories. The second half of the course will examine, in light of more recent historiography, to what extent the concept of the Mediterranean has shaped research on various ages from Antiquity to the present. The course will explore the peculiar ecology and climate of the Mediterranean; it will follow the building of cities, empires, and nations, processes of conquest, colonization, and religious changes, boundary-crossing through trade, migration, captivity, and acculturation.
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