Mediterranean Topographies ("Meditopos")

For the 2025–26 academic year, Mediterranean Topographies (Meditopos) will be organized around the theme of home in the Mediterranean, which broadly includes domestic and private spaces. This interdisciplinary research workshop will explore domestic and private spaces not only as sites of personal and cultural significance but also as zones of political tension, displacement, surveillance, and resistance. How do personal experiences intersect with histories of migration, conflict, surveillance, and belonging? What does it mean to make, find, leave, or lose a home in times of political and climate instability? We will consider the meanings and materialities of ‘home’ across the Mediterranean region. From physical structures to affective attachments, we’ll explore how home is imagined, inhabited, and contested from diverse disciplinary perspectives. The workshop draws from multiple departments and programs at Michigan, including Comparative Literature, History, Anthropology, Middle East Studies, Romance Languages and Literatures, History of Art, Slavic Studies, English, and Classics, aiming to create a collaborative space linking across departments. We hope to foster interdisciplinary conversations about intimate, political, and symbolic dimensions of home in past and present Mediterranean contexts.