The FIRB research project Beyond the Holy War is inviting scholars to submit papers for a three-session international workshop titled “Christian-Islamic Interactions: Mobility, Connection, Transformation (1450-1800)”, which will take place at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy), on 10-11 February 2014.
The workshop is devoted to the topic of interactions. In particular, our aim is to shed further light on Christian-Islamic relationship in the early modern world, in order to better understand how, in a situation of contained conflict, Christians and Muslims crossed political and religious borders, experiencing social contacts, cultural exchanges, and transformations. We are also concerned with the role of other religious groups (Jews, Hindus, Eastern Christians) as brokers and go-betweens. The workshop encourages a global comparative approach, linking the Mediterranean area, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Proposals from Ph.D. and post-doc students are particularly welcome. The languages of the workshop are English, Italian and Spanish.
We are interested in the following key questions:
1. To what extent did individual experience of interaction affect the group (or community) of belonging?
2. Are there specific social conditions of historical agents, which help scholars to better focus on communication between Christians and Muslims?
3. How can we explore the reciprocal awareness of the meaning of relations across Christian and Islamic worlds?
Beside classical topics such as corsair war and redemption, conversion and mission, cultural dialogue and disputation, we particularly invite contributions related to one or more of the following areas:
a) Mobility: circulation of people (in particular, travellers, diplomats, merchants, slaves), objects and goods whose use was reconfigured (including art objects, books, sacred objects, relics), and ideas (techniques, scientific knowledge, religious beliefs, prophecies, political views); their cultural, religious, economic motivations; their different geographical directions and typologies.
b) Connection: interactions among entangled and simultaneous phenomena across Christian and Islamic worlds, both in cultural sphere (representation, iconography, ideology, travel description, sexuality) and in the legal-institutional one (commercial structures, policies of reception of strangers, fraternities).
