University of California – MRP Mediterranean Studies
Winter 2011 Mediterranean Studies MRP Workshop: Mediterranean Court Cultures
Friday, 18 February • UC Santa Barbara
10:30-11:00 AM Coffee and Welcome
11:00—11:30 AM Introductory Session
11:45 AM—1:00 PM Jonathan Decter (Brandeis University)
“Before Caliphs and Kings: Jewish Courtiers in Medieval Iberia”
1:00-2:00 PM Lunch
2:00-3:15 PM Jocelyn Sharlet (University of California, Davis)
“All the Right Stuff: Gift Exchange, Competing Values, and the Political Elite in Medieval Arabic Literature”
3:15-3:30 PM Coffee Break
3:30-4:45 PM Amy Aisen Kallender (Syracuse University)
“Disentangling Family from State: France and Tunisia in the Nineteenth Century”
5:00-5:45 PM Concluding Session
Reception
Winter 2011 Mediterranean Studies MRP Conference: Medieval Studies Conference
Saturday, 19 February • UC Santa Barbara
9:30-10:00 AM Coffee Service
10:00 AM-12:00 PM Culture and Contact (or Not): Mediterranean Courts
Nancy Khalek (Brown University)
“Epistles to the Byzantine Emperor in the Abbasid Period”
S. Peter Cowe (UCLA)
“Islamic Interchange with the Armenian Court at Cilicia in the Levant (12th-14th centuries)”
Carol Lansing (UCSB)
“The Emperor’s Elephant: Mediterranean Influence on North Italian Courts”
Elizabeth Bradford Smith (Pennsylvania State University)
“By the People, for the People: Santa Maria Novella as Expression of the Communal Culture of Medieval Florence”
12:00-1:00 PM Lunch
1:00-3:00 PM Mediterranean Courtly Practices
Dwight Reynolds (UCSB)
“Music in the Courts: Trade in Music and Musicians in Medieval Europe and the Middle East”
Christine Chism (UCLA)
“Between Muslim and Christian in Ibn Battuta’s Travels in between Courts in the North-East Mediterranean”
Joshua C. Birk (Smith College)
“Slaves of the Court: Eunuchs in a Twelfth Century Mediterranean World”
Florence Eliza Glaze (Coastal Carolina University)
“From Babel to Biblion: Episodes in the Development of a Uniform Latinized Graeco-Arabic Pharmacological Tradition in Eleventh and Twelfth Century Salerno”
3:30-3:45 PM Coffee Break
3:45-5:15 PM History and Architecture in Norman Sicily
Heather Blurton (UCSB)
“Hugo Falcandus’ History of the Tyrants of Sicily and 12th Century Anglo-Norman Historiography”
William Tronzo (UCSD)
“The Norman Palace in Palermo as Crucible of the Arts”
Lara Tohme (Wellesley College)
“The Making of a Mediterranean Capital City : Palermo under the Normans .”
5:15-6:00 PM Concluding Remarks
7:00 PM Reception
Sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the UC Multi-Campus Research Project on Mediterranean Studies, the Department of History, the Department of French and Italian, Religious Studies, and the Center for Middle East Studies.