The International Journal of Euro-Mediterranean Studies (www.ijems.emuni.si) is announcing a thematic issue entitled “Entangled Histories? Trans-Cultural Encounters and Social Mobility in the Arab Mediterranean,” co-edited by Nadia Al-Bagdadi and Adam Mestyan from the Central European University in Budapest.
This is a call for papers that seek to offer new perspectives on the complex history of trans-cultural movements and social mobility within, and between, the (Ottoman) Arab Mediterranean and Europe in the pre-modern, modern and contemporary periods. Taking as its starting point the view that movements across the Mediterranean were multi-directional, be they official, clandestine or unseen, this special issue seeks to make a contribution to innovative research, empirical/archival and/or conceptual, and thus to enhance present debates about the Mediterranean as a sea that unites rather than divides. A multi-layered picture and understanding of processes of exchange may challenge paradigms of historical explanation that are still premised on deterministic frameworks of colonialism, post-coloniality, and westernization, and hence to maintain unilateral and univocal modes of analysis. In particular, we invite papers, based on new historical research, that would offer critical insights into the contemporary fetishes of culture and mobility, or that give due weight to non-political agency in comparative or croisée histories. We would especially welcome contributions that focus on institutions, various forms of agency, translations (in the widest possible sense), life experiences, re-conceptualizations and recastings of centre and periphery relations, or symbolic geographies of the Levant and the Arab world in their Ottoman and Mediterranean contexts.
Papers should be submitted by 15 September 2011 to ijems@emuni.si.
Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere (conference papers may only be submitted if the paper was not originally copyrighted and if it has been re-written). When submitting a manuscript, please follow the guidelines for submission (http://www.emuni.si/press/ISSN/1855-3362/authors.html). Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees under a double-blind peer review process, where both the referees and the authors are kept anonymous.
The International Journal of Euro-Mediterranean Studies (IJEMS) is an open access journal aimed at promoting intercultural dialogue and exchanges between societies, developing human resources, and assuring greater mutual understanding in the Euro-Mediterranean region. To accomplish this objective, the journal seek to publish high quality research papers and case studies.
IJEMS in indexed/listed in the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences and in the Directory of Open Access Journals.