The book of Konstantina Zanou Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850. Stammering the Nation (published in november 2018 at Oxford University Press) won the Mediterranean Seminar Book Prize
The judges remarked :
“This book charts a neglected but crucial process in Mediterranean history: the confusing and complex ways in which the premodern, multi-ethnic empires came to be replaced in the Eastern part of the sea by the modern nation-states of Italy and Greece. These momentous historical changes are examined through the prism of individual lives of intellectuals and politicians, thanks to an elegant combination of macrohistory and microhistory in an era that served as a juncture between the Modern and Pre-Modern. Guiding the reader through the strategies these writers adopted to reinvent their lives, their languages, and their identities, and that of the nations they helped bring to life, Zanou maps a fascinating transnational, trans-imperial Mediterranean geography during an era of turbulent change, in a beautifully researched and written intervention in intellectual global history.”
- “Explores the different traditions and conjunctures between the Mediterranean, northern Europe, the Ottoman world, and the Russian Empire
- Proposes a new and exciting way of writing history through individual biographies and microhistories
- Explores notions of nationhood, empire, and the creation of national consciousness
- Emphasizes the important role Russo-Mediterranean and Orthodox Christianity played in the Modern Greek Enlightenment
- Shakes many of the pillars of our understanding of nationalism, by approaching the creation of national consciousness as a transnational and diasporic phenomenon
- Explores the initial stages of the creation of the Italian and Greek national languages and literatures as intrinsically interconnected”