Over the past seventy years Mediterranean Studies has become a dynamic field of study, with the Mediterranean serving as a lens through which geographic, religious, and political borders could be interrogated. Much of this work focused on the medieval and early modern periods, but influenced our understanding of topics such as migration and intellectual exchange during later centuries. The field of Indian Ocean Studies has a younger genealogy, with foundational work that stressed the economic and political connections across this larger ocean. The studies of the two bodies of water during the past decades largely continued in parallel, seldom directly interacting. This edition of the Mediterranean Seminar takes “Oceanic Studies” as a means to explore possible connections, productive parallels, or critical rejections—the ways that Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Studies can be brought together (or should be kept apart).
Convened by
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Justin Stearns, Professor of Arab Crossroads, NYU Abu Dhabi; Global Network Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies, NYUAD
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Brian Catlos, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
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Sharon Kinoshita, Professor of Literature; Fellow, Medieval Academy of America; Co-director, The Mediterranean Seminar, University of California Santa Cruz
