Along with the wide range of disciplines represented on the pages of Mediterranean Studies, the articles we publish are marked by an impressive variety of approaches to scholarship. Mediterranean Studies 34.1 exemplifies this distinctive characteristic. In “The Deisis in Panagia Drosiani, Naxos (500–700 C.E.): the Fresco Tells Its Story,” Vasiliki Limberis privileges image over text, questioning the nominal identities of two figures in a renowned fresco in Naxos. Setting aside the local history recounted by the inscriptions on the fresco, the author frees the images to tell a story with a much wider scope, narrating the accomplishments of Emperor Constantine IV in the Mediterranean beyond Naxos.This issue also continues to expand the study of the eastern Mediterranean, featuring a study of a key moment in the Mediterranean history of Armenia. Zohrab Gevorgyan’s article, “Diseases, Disorders, Disabilities and Rights in the Environmental History of Cilician Armenia: The Eastern Mediterranean Context Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries” guides readers through the linguistic, medical, political and social evidence for Armenia’s role in shaping Mediterranean practices that regulate relationships between individuals afflicted with challenging conditions and the institutions with the power to determine those relationships. Although Armenian history is the focus of this study, the author makes clear the argument that Armenia’s experience ramified through a broader swath of the Mediterranean.Joan Rodriguez Santeugini tells a complex story of banditry through a study of the practice in early modern Catalonia. Correlating information from a variety of records, including fiction and local tradition in “Banditry in Early Modern Catalonia,” the author documents a dramatic chapter in the history of this standoff between the rule of law and the rule of the jungle in the principality. In the author’s version of this clash, the distinctive brand of banditry in Catalonia during the early modern period broke through the frontiers of the principality to reverberate through a broader Mediterranean context. In his orchestration of a broad range of sources, the author presents a rich reading of the parallel phenomena of banditry and the centralization of power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Contemporary eyewitness experience informs the study of Marseille’s Vieux Port market in “My Mediterranean Is Not the One You See on the Picture Post Cards.” Angela Gioivanangeli and Jean Duraz take readers on a walking tour through this iconic waterfront market to study the dynamics of contemporary Mediterranean identities. As participant observers, the authors analyze sensory experiences—their own and those of the subjects they interview—in an attempt to understand how identities are constructed in this fraught point of multicultural contact. In studying the issue of Mediterranean identities through the lens of a public market, the authors foreground the tension between nostalgia for a Mediterranean world that has disappeared and anxiety over the Mediterranean future.Six book reviews further expand the scope of disciplinary positions in this issue’s articles. Susan O. Shapiro’s review of The World of Homer by Michael B. Cosmopoulos reminds readers that, since the sixth century BCE, questions have been posed about the origin, the development and the historicity of Homeric epics. This study is the most recent attempt to answer those questions. The author assembles archaeological, historical and sociological evidence to offer clear and accessible responses for non-specialist scholars who seek a richer understanding of Homeric poetry.Brendan McCarthy reviews The Arsacids of Rome: Misunderstanding in Roman Parthian Relationships by Jake Nabel. As Augustus began his reign, the ruling dynasty of Parthia, the Arascids, sent family members to live in Rome. To the Romans, the practice signified their defeat of this rival dynasty. But to the Arascids, the practice was viewed as a way to forge familial bonds in the context of service. This difference in perspective creates a contrast between the Mediterranean and the Near East, granting Parthia an important role as an agent in Mediterranean history.Pamela Long’s recently published Technology in Mediterranean and European Lands, 600–1600, reviewed here by Monique O’Connell, diverges from the familiar history of technology as a story of societal progress. Instead, this work views technological innovations through the lens of process, contributing to the growing trend to replace an emphasis on linear and teleological trajectories of technology with perspectives that consider the local decisions, the political and economic contexts and assimilation and adaptation across cultures that shape the history of technology.In the essays edited by Daniel G. Kőnig in “Entangled Worlds” 600–1350, reviewed by James A. Palmer, a variety of approaches to the study of medieval history contribute to the trend to globalize the period. Kőnig distributes the essays into sections on the Americas, Da’ar al-Islam, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, depicting a global premodernity that is shaping alternative views of this period.Donald Wright’s review of Forgotten Saint-Simonian Travelers in Egypt: Suzanne Voilquin, Ismayl Urbain, Jehan d’Ivray by John David Ragan sheds light on the experiences of three figures in the St.-Simonian movement who found themselves for different reasons in Egypt in the nineteenth century. These three portraits join the trend in scholarship that is contending with Orientalism, in this case, bucking the practice of studying the male traveler or the administrative attaché to focus instead on Egypt as perceived by individuals from a variety of walks of French life.This section concludes with Lucia Boldrini’s review of Mediterranean Crime Fiction: Transcultural Narratives in and Around the “Great Sea” by Barbara Pezzotti. Considering crime fiction as a clearly definable field that benefits from a transnational world-literature perspective, the author goes beyond the geographical descriptor of “Mediterranean” to examine the region’s identities in the political and social contexts of its many locations and its intermixed histories.The articles and reviews in Mediterranean Studies 34.1 continue to expand and influence the parameters of scholarship of the region, while remaining focused on the journal’s mission of supporting original and well-documented approaches to the field of Mediterranean studies. On behalf of our readers, I thank the authors and reviewers, who are the real stars of this issue.
Susan L. Rosenstreich (Fri,) studied this question.