The College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University, leading a Mediterranean Studies Research Group and a Mediterranean Studies Certificate, invites submissions for an upcoming symposium on Mediterranean Studies to be held in July 2021. 

 In recent years, the discipline of Mediterranean Studies has “gone from constituting a rather vague approach to a region imagined in geographical terms, to coalescing as a recognized field of research and teaching – a process driven in part by its inherent imperative to interrogate established categories of cultural and historical analysis.  In our era of globalization, transnationalism, oceanic and diasporic studies, the Mediterranean has come to captivate the imagination of scholars who see in it an alternative to the paradigms that have dominated scholarly discourse” (Hamilton and Silleras-Fernandez, “Iberia and the Mediterranean: An Introduction” in In and Of the Mediterranean, 2015). Sociologist Franco Cassano in his work Pensiero meridiano (1996) speaks of the Mediterranean as the transnational system of peripheral “others” that he calls the Global Souths, “places where, for centuries, civilizations have met and hung in the balance between conflict, coexistence, and contaminations.” Reconsidering the Mediterranean, appreciating and demarginalizing the peoples and cultures of the Mediterranean, while considering the affinities and differences is a must.  With its multicultural background and surging new waves of migration, Sicily, the largest island of the Mediterranean, which will host our upcoming symposium, offers an invaluable model for this analytical process.

This Mediterranean Studies symposium, sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University and its local partners, is to be held in breathtaking Ortigia, from the 1st to the 4th of July 2021, at the Exedra Mediterranean Center, https://www.exedramc.com. Official language will be English (even though each session’s Q/A can be conducted in the language most comfortable for the presenter and its audience). 

Deadline to submit a 200-word abstract (together with bio) or complete panel (with all bios) proposals is NOVEMBER 29, 2020.

Since the organizers would like to create an informal and conducive atmosphere of dialogue and brainstorming, the number of proposals accepted is restricted.  Presenters will be invited to bring along any relevant and recent publication for our symposium book display.  Please note that the symposium schedule will consist of educational tours and cultural activities alongside presentations, lively discussions, and group meals.