The UC Mediterranean Studies MRP Fall Workshop, “Excavating the Past,” will feature three pre-circulated papers and a presentation by our featured scholar. All interested graduate students and scholars are welcome; pre-registration is required, and attendance is limited so please register soon. UC-affiliated scholars may register immediately, non-UC scholars on or after October 8.

Papers:
Luca Zavagno (Visiting Research Fellow, Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Center, Princeton)
“Two Hegemonies, One Island: Cyprus between the Byzantines and the Umayyads (650-850 A.D.)”

Nikki Malain (Graduate Student, History, UC Santa Barbara)
“Predators and praeda: The Logistics of Piracy in the Twelfth-century Mediterranean”

Karen R. Mathews (Research Assistant Professor, Art & Art History, University of Miami)
“Anxiety of Origins: Shifting Conceptions of the Past in Genoese Historical Chronicles and Civic Architecture of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries”

Featured Scholar:
Marcus Milwright (Associate Professor of Islamic Art & Archaeology, Director of the Program in Medieval Studies at the University of Victoria)
“Archaeology and the Study of Traditional Urban Crafts in the Islamic Mediterranean.”

Marcus Milwright is a professor in the Department of History in Art, University of Victoria. He received his doctorate in 1999 from the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. His research interests include the art and archaeology of the Islamic Middle East, labour and craft practices in the urban environment, and cross-cultural contacts in the Medieval Mediterranean. He has published two books, The Fortress of the Raven: Karak in the Middle Islamic Period (1100-1650) (Brill, 2008) and An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology (Edinburgh University Press, 2010). He is currently working on a history of the balsam gardens of Matariyya in Egypt and a study of the Umayyad mosaic inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock.

To register for the workshop and receive the draft papers, please contact Courtney Mahaney (cmahaney@ucsc.edu) at the University of California, Santa Cruz. UC-affiliated faculty and graduate students will be eligible for up to $350 for travel expenses; non-UC participants may apply but support will granted as available (and only after the workshop concludes).

The Mediterranean Seminar is an interdisciplinary scholarly forum the aim of which to promote collaborative research and the development of the field of Mediterranean Studies. The UC Mediterranean Studies Multi-Campus Research Project is funded by the UC Office of the President, and is administered by the Institute for Humanities Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

To join the Mediterranean Seminar, send your name, professional status, affiliation and fields of interest to mailbox@mediterraneanseminar.org.