As part of its ongoing interest in relations across the straits of Gibraltar, the Spain-North Africa project (SNAP) announces a call for article abstracts for a special issue of The Journal of North African Studies(JNAS) with the theme of Facets of Exchange between North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. The issue will be guest-edited by Miriam Ali de Unzaga and Adam Gaiser.
Authors are encouraged to explore innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of exchanges between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. By ‘exchange’ the editors envision a broad discussion that may contain interactions and movements of people, ideas, and objects, including circulation between allies or among rivals. Hence, topics of interest may include:
•economic and technological interactions (goods and commodities, modalities and mechanisms of exchange, trade networks and outposts, new technologies),
•political exchanges (gifts, ambassadors, soldiers, refugees, spies),
•artistic and aesthetic circulation (sites, pieces, artists and artisans, patrons, fashions, motifs, materials, techniques),
•socio-cultural exchange (family ties, institutions),
•religious and intellectual movements (scholars, traditions, beliefs, practices, concepts, words, texts and translations),
•other instances of appropriation, adaption or simulation
The authors especially encourage papers:
•exploring and illustrating the mechanics, processes and results of exchange in specific and detailed case studies;
•providing theoretical frameworks;
•examining clichés and assumptions;
•presenting critical reviews of previous scholarship;
•addressing the reasons for the paucity of studies on exchange between North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula and/or producing a historiographical contextualization.
The SNAP-JNAS issue will focus on medieval and early modern exchanges, but explorations of earlier or later periods will also be considered. Similarly, papers investigating the significance of exchange between North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula and its impact on other geographical areas will also be considered.
Abstracts should be 300 words in length (including provisional title, name and institutional affiliation), and should relate to original, unpublished work. Please submit your abstracts to Adam Gaiser (agaiser@fsu.edu) and Miriam Ali de Unzaga (miriam.alideunzaga@sant.oxon.org) by Dec. 31, 2011. Once selected, drafts of the articles should be no longer than 10000 words, and are expected by June 15, 2012. The Journal of North African Studies is a peer-reviewed journal and articles considered for publication are read by specialist readers, as well as by the guest editors.
Members are invited to circulate the call for abstracts and for papers to non-members, though it is expected that authors who are selected to contribute to the special issue would become members of SNAP. For further information, please visit the site:
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1362-9387&linktype=1