Images of the Mediterranean as either the "cradle of civilizations," or the "birthplace of monotheistic religions," or the "region of trans-cultural communication" are established in contemporary historical culture. They have also contributed to the formation and circulation of Mediterranean stereotypes. In historical studies, Fernand Braudel's seminal work introduced a variety of topics related to the history of the Mediterranean and to its multidimensional and complex character. Currently, Braudel's important contribution attracts new attention due to a growing interest in the transnational history of a region "experiencing" important contemporary political, economic and cultural transformations. Yet, in recent studies, the Mediterranean is no longer simply the "context" within which phenomena of the "longue duree" are discussed. "Mediterraneanism," also, is no longer conceptualized as a monolithic and totalizing category which attributes certain, specific features to all societies and cultures related to this "mare internum." On the contrary, the Mediterranean itself, as a conceptual space, is currently problematized and set at the centre of scholarly research, which turns its interest in the mobility of peoples, goods, cultural products and practices as well as in the narrations which construct, deconstruct and reconstruct it. In this context, the Mediterranean acquires new semantic and heuristic values whilst it also emerges as a "region of micro-regions" and as a real and imaginary space of overlapping narrations of unity and division, of coexistence and conflict. The International Conference on the Moving Frontiers of the Mediterranean focuses on the mobility of peoples and goods as well as on memories and narratives reflecting the either peaceful and either conflictual contacts of ethnic, religious and cultural groups in the "sea that divides and unites." Through different approaches, themes and analytical trends, the Conference aims at exploring the variety of conceptualizations and meanings which surround the Mediterranean itself as well as the entangled histories of its peoples.

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