Gendered mobilities: Spaces, images, and power across the Mediterranean (16th–20th centuries)

This chapter introduces the gender prism as a crucial methodological tool to explore mobility. First, it shows the multiple ways in which gender dynamics impact human mobility. It also shows how mobility (of objects, ideas, and people) reshapes gendered spaces, notably by moving frontiers between private and public spaces. Gender and mobility have been closely intertwined in different historical contexts, and have involved significant social implications. To shed light on these complex dimensions, this chapter adopts a long-term perspective on the phenomenon of human mobility across the Mediterranean and the Red Sea between the 16th and the 20th centuries. It outlines historical case studies to answer two main questions: how did mobility affect gender roles in both Europe and the Middle East? How did gender dynamics impact (im)mobility practices and imaginaries? The chapter consists of three sections. The first focuses on the current historiographical debate on these issues. The second explores how recent studies have analysed the relationship between mobility and gender in the early modern period. The third section contains methodological remarks on the opportunity of using a gender approach to mobility studies