Mediterranean Identities

MEDITERRANEAN IDENTITIES PROJECT

There will be jointly organized conferences by the School of Archaeology and Ancient History (University of Leicester) and the Departments of Classics and Archaeology (University of Nottingham) over the next five years. The duration of each conference will be no more than four days at a time and it will be open to scholars from other universities. The proposed themes for each conference are the following:

1.Formation and Transformation of Identities. In this conference we will try to explore reasons for the initial formation of identities as well as reasons for their eventual transformation focusing mainly on the study of movements of populations, migrations, wars, revolutions and other similar incidents.

2.Urban Identities. The purpose of this venue is to bring together scholars who study the identities of cities and/ or urban centres and their development throughout the centuries. Topics could include the identity of an individual city, the communal identity of a cluster of cities, or social/ cultural/ economic identities as they were constructed within a specific city.

3.Marginal Identities. Moving away from the topic of identities, which occur after the direct or indirect intervention of the state, I would like to focus on identities that are formed in the margins of society, such as the Roman subura or the slave quarters in the Antebellum American South.

4.Religious Identities. Topics on this theme will include the influence philosophical, political or other movements in the formation of such identities, their establishment with or without the help of the state, the development of monotheism vs polytheism etc.

5.Identities after Death. This is the final conference of the series. Appropriately, it should focus on the identities related to the cultic or intellectual rituals of death. Funerary traditions tend to last long and they are particularly resistant to change. Their study could help us understand the formation of regional/ inter-regional identities and their impact on the living.