Waterways

The new project on worldwide Waterways is designed to shift the emphasis to look at the ways in which the waters create links between diverse economies, cultures, and religions.

Abulafia reminds us that “[d]eserts, like seas, have their islands, or oases, and they have their established trade routes, their navigators and their own very limited resources for which nomads can `fish'.” The goal is to open the possibility of multidisciplinary cross-fertilization rather than mere comparative studies by utilizing the notion of Middle Seas, such as Caribbean, Mediterranean, and South China seas, as connectors and transformative spaces where national origins dissolve and re-emerge.

Project Leader: Aurora Morcilla, Professor of History