MOBILITY, IDENTITY AND CONTACT IN THE MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN

This course will compare three movements of people critical to the history of
the medieval Mediterranean: the barbarian migration of the fifth and sixth
centuries, the Arab conquest of the Levant and North Africa in the seventh
and eighth centuries and the Byzantine reaction, and the Norman take-over
and administration of southern Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
and especially the reign of Roger II. These three events are watersheds -some
more highly recognized than others- that put new peoples in contact and
created the opportunity for the expression of identity in new ways and in new
media.
The course units will include the following:
1. Measuring Human Movement: Mobility, Migration, Invasion and Conquest
2. Introduction to the “Age of Migration”
3. Introduction to the Islamic Conquest of the Levant and North Africa
4. Introduction to Southern Italy and Sicily before and during the Normans
5. Contact, Conflict, Population Migration and the Written Record
6. Identity and Population Migration in Genetics and Archaeology
7. Reading Mobility in Medieval Chronicles
8. Religious Texts as Witness to Identity and Migration
9. Assessing Cultural Borrowing
10. Monuments and Material Culture
11. Laws, Regulations, and Administration