About: | Konrad Petrovszky |
Position: | Key Researcher |
Node: | Identities and Religions |
The area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea continues to receive only marginal treatment in general historical surveys. Especially for the early modern period, there is an immense disparity between the flourishing research on Western knowledge production and those historical writings that were produced and circulated in the Ottoman or Ottoman-Venetian area. This case study aims to lay the groundwork for correcting this imbalance in the long term by taking an unprecedented comparative look at historiography in a multilingual, multi-confessional, and politically diverse space, including its implications for asserting past and present differences among the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula.
Situated at the intersection of Mediterranean, Eastern European, and Near Eastern cultures, early modern Southeastern Europe offers the opportunity to understand the various forms, practices, and meanings of historiography in a tense contact zone where nearly all the languages, religions, and writing systems of the Eastern Mediterranean world intersected. Methodologically, this situation requires a comparative approach that takes into account all written languages, cultural and religious spheres. Building on the focusing in particular on spatial notions of identity, language as a medium and object of historiography, and the limits of cultural exchange, each to be published as special journal issues. In the long term, a broad and interdisciplinary network of scholars in the field of pre-modern historiography will be established to promote research in the field of textual and intellectual history of the Eastern European-Mediterranean area.