2019-20

This course focuses on the relations between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire from the 15th century, when the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks, to the 18th century when the Republic of Venice (La Serenissima) disappeared.  The course deals with both the fighting and with other types of contact between the Ottomans and the Venetians that occurred in Greece, a frontier region between these two powers.  The seminar will focus on the elements by which “The Other” is identified.

Teaching Method: Seminar. The seminar can be attended by a maximum of 20 students.

The course deals with the presence of Islam in the Balkans from a historical and
anthropological point of view. In chronological terms, it deals with the period from the end
of the 19th century to the final decade of the 20th century. It focuses upon socio-political
developments in the Balkans at the start of the 1990s and on their consequences for Islam in

Anthropological demography is a relatively new discipline which blends demographic methods and analysis with the corresponding methods and analysis drawn from socio-cultural anthropology and physical anthropology and evolutionary thought. The aim of the course is to ensure that students have an understanding of the basic aspects of anthropological thought that concern the demographic features of human populations. Course outline:
The concept of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity.
Demographic transition as an example of interdisciplinary approaches.

The course will reflect upon gender as an analytical category in social anthropology. Gender identities reveal gender asymmetries and as such can be used as a means to explore the position of men and women in any given social formation. The first lectures deal with women’s position in pre-modern and modern societies. Thus we will discuss women’s rights and the vote in western cultures, although we will also examine “exotic” and “remote” societies that present interesting examples of matrilineality and matrilocality.