Responsible: Patrizia Spinato

Abstract

The Mediterranean is a crossroad of moving waters on which ancient itineraries meet and intersect. On these paths, men of different cultures exchanged and shared knowledge, experiences and distinct perceptions of the world. A powerful and unstoppable process of interculturality, knowledge, growth and integration is grafted onto this path. The Mediterranean is the heart of an unending journey whose routes also addressed the oceans, and the men who travelled them mark and accompany the evolution of history, culture and society. Between these geographical poles – political, social, economic – centuries of history, relationships and cultural transformations are intertwined, along the multiple lines of literary representations, evangelization and migrations. The project brings together studies and research on the origins, evolution and impact of these dynamics – considered in all their multidimensional purpose – within the great transformation processes relating to the Mediterranean basin and its oceanic projections.

Goals

The project’s objectives are: to strengthen research in the mentioned areas; propose strategic policies and guidelines on the topics addressed; carry out specific scientific activities (publications, seminars, conventions, conferences); promote dissemination initiatives in contexts of wide public diffusion, such as exhibitions, training courses, interviews and dissemination through mass media (television, radio, websites, online social platforms) in order to implement an effective impact on the same territory of the scientific research.

Activities

The project includes a lot of activities open to different scientific fields, which develop thanks to the synergy among the multidisciplinary skills of the researchers, the national and international collaborations, the internal and external professionals involved in various skills. It takes inspiration from a broad vision of the phenomena of transformation of the Mediterranean area and its oceanic projections – the so-called new Mediterraneans -, starting from the Middle Ages up to the contemporary era, to bring out different peculiarities, focusing both on individual historical contingencies ‒ political, cultural, artistic, economic, religious ‒ and on its long-term constants (e.g. man as homo migrans).

Themes

The themes we develop within the disciplinary aim of the project are multiple and transversal: 

• History and cultural transformations in the Iberian Mediterranean and the Atlantic from the Middle Ages to the contemporary age (Alessandra Cioppi, Maria Elena Seu)
  The study of the origin and historical depth of cultural transformations in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic allows investigative perspectives of broad thematic openness, whose reflections also embrace current events. The research involves migratory dynamics as events through which cultural experiences and transfers of knowledge, capable of modifying politics, institutions, economy, culture and religion of the places involved, have been and are being realized in different historical contexts. Especially, the study of the migratory issues of the Iberian Mediterranean and the meaning it had for Southern Europe and the New World makes the latter the privileged observers of the project.

• Between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic: scholars, men of letters, chroniclers, missionaries and diplomats (Patrizia Spinato)
  The European world, which faced the New one and provided its first perception and arrangement, acquires a deeply composite physiognomy through the works and relationships of those who, starting from 1492, had the chance of critically dealing with different lands, societies, and cultures. Genoese and Venetians, Portuguese, Castilians and Aragonese took part to different extents in the conquest of the Americas, from the stage of discovery to the integration into a new society, much more rapidly than they thought. Of this versatile world, engendered by the human contributions of the two shores of the Mare Nostrum, colonial America represented the extreme overseas projection and an apex moment of those instances of cultural syncretism that form the model of Iberian expansion both at a Mediterranean and a global level. On a basis of mutual exchange and enrichment, offered by frontier characters, there are countless examples of scholars, writers, chroniclers, diplomats, travellers, migrants, religious people who, between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, activated an admirable cultural osmosis. The study of Mediterranean and Atlantic literatures, especially of the Iberophone area, from ancient times to the present day, well underlines the dense network of relationships that underlies areas that are very distant geographically but closely linked from a cultural point of view.

• The multi-secular developments in the history of the Catholic Church, from the Mediterranean basin to the Americas (Alberto Guasco)
  The Mediterranean and Atlantic horizons of the history of the church of the 19th and 20th centuries can be grasped through the analysis of a double movement, forward and backward. 1. On the Mediterranean side, there are figures such as that of the Catalan Antonio Maria Claret (1807-1870). On the Atlantic side, a significant female insertion, capable of influencing Pope Bergoglio, is that of the Argentine Amelia Podetti (1928-1979). 2. The Mediterranean, cradle of the origins of Christianity, is the place where, during the second half of the 20th century, the attempt at that “return to the origins” manifests itself in a very significant way which, on the Rome-Istanbul axis between the 1960s and 1970s, found its incarnation in Jerusalem with the foundation of the Ecumenical Institute of Tantur. 3. Italy of the 19th and 20th centuries represents a significant mirror of investigation both in its relations with the Holy See and with the geopolitical evolutions of the Mediterranean area. Very interesting is, in this sense, the figure of Giuseppe Toniolo (1845-1918). 4. Finally, as regards some elements relating to the loss of Italy’s role within the Mediterranean and the cause of its current instability, we can mention its origins, which date back to the crisis that exploded in the early 1990s and, in its many historical, political and judicial entanglements (Mani Pulite, Tangentopoli), still unresolved.

Contacts and collaborations

National and international collaborations are consolidated and active: 

• Ambasciata di Spagna a Roma 
• Ministero dell’Agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste 
• Regione Autonoma Sardegna 
• Instituto Cervantes 
• Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes 
• CeMaB, Alicante 
• CSIC 
• CONICET 
• Istituto Storico Italiano per l’età Moderna e Contemporanea, Roma 
• Università di Milano 
• Università di Pavia 
• Università di Udine 
• Università L’Orientale di Napoli 
• Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia  
• Università Alma Mater Studiorum di Bologna  
• Università di Roma-Tre  
• Università di Cagliari 
• Università di Sassari  
• Universidad de Alicante 
• Universidad de León  
• UAM, Madrid 
• Universidad Complutense, Madrid 
• Universidad de Málaga 
• Universidad de Murcia 
• Universidad de Oviedo 
• Universidad de Siviglia 
• Universidad de Valencia 
• UB, Barcelona  
• UdL, Lleida  
• UNAM, México  
• UAM, Méxcio 
• Universidad de Guadalajara, México 
• Universidad de Guatemala 
• Universidad de Buenos Aires 
• Fondazione Carlo Maria Martini, Milan 
• Istituto Gaetano Salvemini, Turin 
• Fondazione Opera Giuseppe Toniol, Pisa  
• Fondazione Carlo Donat Cattin, Turin 
• Fondazione Camaldoli, Camaldoli 
• AISU  
• AEELH 
• AISI  
• AISPI 

Participation in research networks on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic: 

• Nutraceutical Health Enhancing Functional Food (NUTRHEFF)  
• Gruppo di ricerca di Teoria e storia delle Culture, delle Letterature e delle Arti del Mondo (CLAMoLab) 

Main collective research and dissemination products

In addition to many individual and group works in journals (for instance Dal Mediterraneo agli Oceani) and volumes, the line of research is also reflected in some scientific dissemination activities aimed at a general public. We emphasize our collaborations with national festivals and cultural events (“Bookcity” Milan; “Molte fedi sotto lo stesso cielo”, Bergamo; “Festival biblico”, Vicenza; “Torino spiritualità”, Turin) and the media partnership with radio programs (Radio 3 Rai, “Uomini e profeti”) and newspapers (Corriere della Sera, Jesus San Paolo, Avvenire).