—organized by Clark Professor Barbara Fuchs (UCLA)

Friday, February 10, 9:00 a.m.

Core Program

The program involves humanities scholars whose research interests relate to the representation of empire and imperial rivalry in the early modern Mediterranean. The field of Mediterranean studies has grown tremendously in recent years, with rich investigations both within the national disciplines and in a comparative framework, placing empires side by side. This series will focus on the imbrication and entanglement of the various actors in the early modern Mediterranean (the Ottoman and the Habsburg empires, Portugal, Morocco, France, England, Venice, and so forth). How is imperial competition managed in different genres? How do literary and cultural productions render the alterity and the attraction of the cultures encountered? Rivalry and Rhetoric will feature three symposia that take us from the broadest problems of representation to a case study—early modern England—for which the "Mediterranean turn" has radically changed the field.

Session 2—Black Legends and Domestic Dissent

This conference explores the intersections between the discourses that discredit Spain or the Ottomans as imperial actors, and the contestation of orthodoxy in the domestic sphere. How is anti-Spanish sentiment used across Europe, and how does it enable local or national forms of resistance? How do conceptions of the Ottomans intersect with or influence conceptions of Spain? What is the role of race in the black legends? Conference sessions will focus on different iterations of black legends across Europe and the Americas, as well as on their interpenetration.

Registration Deadline: February 9, 2012

Registration Fees: $20 per person; UC faculty & staff, students with ID: no charge*

All students, University of California faculty and staff may register via e-mail by sending their name, affiliation and phone number to c1718cs@humnet.ucla.edu

*Students should be prepared to provide their current University ID at the conference.

Complimentary lunch and other refreshments are provided to all registrants.