Empire Across Time and Space: Troy, Migration, and Regeneration, Elena N. Boeck, DePaul University
Why did the collapse of a civilization become a cause for celebration? Can traumatic acts of violence and displacement of populations lead to cultural regeneration? A tantalizing, highly original map in a French manuscript diagrams refugee displacements and a succession of world empires in a single image. Its center is not Jerusalem, but the Mediterranean sea. Its genesis springs from a single city – Troy. Blurring the boundaries between literature and history, reality and imagination, the makers of this map gave history a sea-centered shape and foregrounded migration as a regenerative force in history.