18th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders & Sexuality

The Mediterranean has been acknowledged as a distinct environment since at least the work of Fernand Braudel, yet despite this fact, many of the broader studies on the Mediterranean have paid little attention to women and gender. This is particularly the case for studies of the premodern past. For next year’s conference in Baltimore, Berks organizers have invited us to think about gendered environments « through the intricate interplays among gender and sexuality, social and legal systems of power and political representation, and the material realities of an interconnected world continually shaped by physical nature, the human and nonhuman animals, plants, and other beings that inhabit that nature. » With that in mind, we are planning a workshop to explore the Mediterranean as a gendered environment.

We invite proposals from scholars whose work considers the above themes in relation to any location in the Mediterranean in the medieval and early modern periods. Our workshop aims to facilitate a comparative discussion on women from different social, religious, and geographical contexts of the Mediterranean world. In particular, we would like to bring together scholars whose work focuses on Christian, Jewish, or Muslim women, across social hierarchies, and geographical locations. If you are interested, send a 250-word abstract and contact information to Alexandra Guerson (alexandra.guerson@utoronto.ca<mailto:alexandra.guerson@utoronto.ca>) and Dana Wessell Lightfoot (lightfoot@unbc.ca<mailto:lightfoot@unbc.ca>) by March 10th, 2019.