CFP: Mediterranean under Quarantine, Malta 7-8 November 2014
International
Workshop “Mediterranean under Quarantine”, Mediterranean
Institute Malta 7-8 November 2014
The study of Quarantine in the Mediterranean has a long and
established historiography which mainly focuses on the history of lazarettos
within varying historical settings shaped by waves of plague, cholera and other
contagious pandemics spreading throughout the region. This call for papers
intends to stimulate research which assists to critically present new
perspectives and reinvigorate the study of Quarantine, by acting as platform
for the presentation of fresh theoretical outlooks, new methodology and solid,
cutting edge, research of a multidisciplinary nature. Proposals for papers
treating any countries, region and trans-border spaces around and within the
Mediterranean Sea – hence being either country specific or comparative – and
embracing any period from the late 18th century to the present, are
welcome. While the Mediterranean is the proposed setting for this call
for papers – comparative studies with other regions are also solicited.
Proposals for
papers dealing with any of the following thematic axes,
are especially solicited for this international workshop:
Geopolitics:
quarantines and the modern State: the creation of public
health administrations, the upholding of border-defined nations. Quarantines
between modernization and backwardness. International Sanitary Conferences,
international sanitary councils. Quarantines and Mecca pilgrimage.
Space:
Construction and use of quarantine spaces: architecture,
urban planning and daily life. Border definition and the construction of
national states and markets. Parallelisms with provincial and military
divisions, railway and route networks, etc.
Islands:
Islands as distinctively Mediterranean quarantine sites;
islands’ particular experiences of epidemics and approaches to quarantine
systems; islands as isolated quarantine sites or as central hubs of the
regional/global sanitary system.
Technologies:
scientific instruments, devices and operations of
quarantines, including the employment as experimental sites and knowledge
-gathering centres.
Otherness:
Quarantine as ‘transformative’ locus/human experience; as
locations for the construction of ‘Otherness’; vulnerability, social
inequalities in treatment shaped by gender, social class, status, ethnicity and
race; quarantine construction of stigma and stereotyping.
Proposals in
English or French can be submitted by not later than
the 20 March 2014 to quarantinestudies@gmail.com.
You will be informed of the decision of the Selection Committee with regard to
your paper by not later than 10 April 2014.
For further
information on this conference and on the Quarantine
Studies Network, please visit http://quarantinestudies.wordpress.com/
or https://www.facebook.com/quarantinestudies
Quarantine Studies Network
The Quarantine Studies Network has been set up to bring together
historians and social scientists from across Europe and the Mediterranean with
different perspectives, historiographies, and approaches to promote the study
of quarantine, taken in its broader, multifaceted practices and significance.
As a network of scholars we seek to motivate research in order to be able to
critically re-evaluate and reinvigorate this field of study, and to present
fresh theoretical perspectives. Original research which encompasses all geographical
regions of the world and embracing a time frame which goes back to the Middle
Ages is encouraged.
The following
are some areas of research forming key axes of this
network:
- Quarantine and the State throughout history in Europe, the Mediterranean
and beyond.
- Quarantine as source of territorial/spatial organization:
lazarettos: spatial organisation, urban planning and architecture.
- Quarantines as international networking: International Sanitary
Conferences, the International Sanitary Councils and Boards of health,
imperialism, colonialism.
- Institutions and technologies: quarantines as prophylactic
devices/technologies and measures.
- The human experience of quarantine: restrictions, channelling and
tracking of movement (individual and collective) especially across boundaries.
- Quarantine and the pilgrimages to Mecca and other religious
landmarks.
- Quarantine and the human body: experiences of enclosure/detention;
daily routines.
- Memories and representation of quarantines: sites of memory and
heritage/archeology; experiences in writing/literature and the visual arts.
- Quarantine and wider society: state strategies to combat the spread
of contagion but also to extend/deepen social and political control.
To join the network, please visit http://quarantinestudies.wordpress.com/
or https://www.facebook.com/quarantinestudies