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332 Alphabet Soup
A Journal that deals with the Mediterranean may require something
more personal which will strike a sympathetic chord among its
readers. Here I think the invocation of literature and poetry rather
than academic discourse may be more apt, although there is a risk that
this approach may mystify even more what many would claim is
already a mystified area.
The journal was also likened to ‘that well-loved Mediterranean
institution, the coffee shop’; its articles and special issues are to
be ‘arranged as a kind of mezes or antipasto, which we hope will
be filling, exciting and full of different flavours’. 19 Certainly,
JMS ranges by design far more widely, in both disciplines and
periods represented, than the other three examples here considered.
The overall tenor of the journal’s aims, however, is very far
from a self-involved regional romanticization. Those responsible
for JMS not only decline to accept the ‘unity’ of the
Mediterranean as self-evident, but amply appreciate the concept’s
potential manipulation ‘for strategic and political ends’.
The journal therefore ‘aims to encourage interchange among
scholars working in the area and scholars from the area and to
stimulate a debate on specific topics, which tackle the complexity
of the Mediterranean from different theoretical perspectives’.
20 Such an emphasis on dialogue, particularly on
dialogue between academics ‘based in North American and
North European Universities and in Mediterranean ones’,
forms part of the boilerplate in the journal’s call for papers. In
1999, a reorganized editorial team reiterated that commitment,
and took active steps to foster it (for example, with the encouragement
of ‘Discussion Sections’).
In that reorganization, however, the nature of the dialogue
was re-examined and expanded: ‘The Journal should be a
forum for academic collaboration and scholarly dialogue between
the North African, Middle Eastern and European parts
of the Mediterranean Region’. From the beginning of the journal’s
existence, gaps in pan-regional coverage were apparent,
with the very first editorial apologizing for a lack of papers on
19 P. Sant Cassia, ‘Editorial Foreword’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies:
History, Culture and Society in the Mediterranean World 1 (1991), pp. v–vi.
20 Ibid. p. v.