About this Event
The Mediterranean as a space of social, economic, cultural and coercive encounter has, over the last few centuries, been made and remade many times as an imagined political space, occupying different roles in various projects of nation-building and “civilisation”.
This talk offers a distinctive perspective on the unfolding story of the Mediterranean taking a particular starting point: the island of Leros in the southern Aegean Sea. Leros has been witness to some of the most consequential transformations to reshape the modern Mediterranean - from its distinctive position in the Ottoman empire in the 16th to 19th centuries, through the Italian occupation and subsequent colonisation as part of the project of the Fascist Mediterranean, to the incorporation into Greece in 1948 and reinvention as a space dedicated to the “rehabilitation” and containment of those deemed to be at odds with the project of Greek nation-building, and, finally, the contemporary role as an external border of the European Union.
In focusing on the spatio-temporal transformations of the island of Leros, the talk takes a novel entry point through which to interrogate the making and remaking of the modern Mediterranean and its shifting role at the core and the periphery of ‘western civilisation’.
Event venue & nearby stays
Ashton lecture theatre, Ashton St, First Floor, Ashton Building, Liverpool, United Kingdom
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