The Medieval Globe explores the modes of communication, materials of exchange, and myriad interconnections among regions, communities, and individuals in an era central to human history. It promotes scholarship in three related areas of study:
- the direct and indirect means by which peoples, goods, and ideas came into contact
- the deep roots of allegedly modern global developments
- the ways in which perceptions of “the medieval” have been (and are) constructed and deployed around the world.
Contributions to a global understanding of the medieval period need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. The Medieval Globe advances a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations: these include networks, communities, bodies of knowledge, forms of movement, varieties of interaction, and identities. It invites submissions that analyze actual or potential connections, trace trajectories and currents, address topics of broad interest, or pioneer portable methodologies.
The Medieval Globe (TMG) is a peer-reviewed journal to be launched in 2014-15 with a special issue on the Black Death as a global pandemic, edited by Monica Green (Arizona State University). It will be published in both print and digital formats. Themed issues will alternate with issues composed of articles submitted for consideration on a rolling basis. Future issues might address such topics as: pilgrimage, diasporas, race and racializing technologies, maritime cultures and ports-of-call, piracy and crime, knowledge networks, markets and consumerism, entertainment, spoils and spolia, global localities, comparative cosmographies, sites of translation and acculturation, slavery and social mobility.
The Editorial Board is currently seeking submissions. It encourages innovative and collaborative work in a variety of academic genres: full-length articles, scholarly dialogues, multi-authored discussions of critical problems, review essays, and editions or translations of source materials.
Questions? Please contact Carol Symes: symes@illinois.edu