Visible Strangers: Early Modern Urban Identities, Social Visibility, and the Mediterranean Paradigm
By (Author) Filomena Viviana Tagliaferri
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
2nd January 2026
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Hardback
312
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Visible strangers is a collection of essays on the nature of cultural pluralism in the Mediterranean and the different ways in which this was managed in various cities during the early modern period. The book's nine chapters considers new case studies, where authors offer a diachronic view of the nature of the co-presence of minorities in different urban spaces, investigated through the lens of the fascinating relationship between visibility and identity. The considered case studies cover different areas of the Mediterranean space: the Adriatic, the Ottoman empire between Asia and Africa, the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, the island of Malta, at the centre of the Mare Nostrum and host to many of its influences. The analysis of the way cultural pluralism expressed itself wishes to overcome the bias induced by 'Mediterraneanism', that has led to the Mediterranean as an area of study hardening into a conceptual category.
Filomena Viviana Tagliaferri is a Lecturer of Early Modern History at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and a Research Fellow in Early Modern History and the Institute of Mediterranean Europe History of the Italian Research Council (ISEM-CNR)