Partially Open Access Journal: Journal of Levantine Studies
Journal of Levantine Studies
Journal of Levantine Studies (JLS)
is an interdisciplinary academic journal dedicated to the critical
study of the geographical, social, and cultural settings which, in
various periods of history, have been known as the "Levant." The journal
is published biannually in English in print and online by the Van Leer
Jerusalem Institute.
JLS aims to reclaim the Levant as a historical and political
concept and as a category of identity and classification. The notion of
the Levant has undergone a dynamic process of historical evolution in
usage, meaning, and understanding. While the term "Levantine" originally
referred to the European residents of the eastern Mediterranean region,
it later came to refer to regional "native" and "minority" groups. As
it developed alongside colonial practices and Eurocentric attitudes, the
notion gradually acquired derogatory connotations in its everyday and
academic usage. Intellectuals and social thinkers from the region
renounced the term while simultaneously embracing and rejecting Western
prejudices and attempting to avoid identification with larger regional
units, which directly contradicted twentieth-century attempts to build
nation-states. Meanwhile, in academia, the term has been largely
relegated and confined to the fields of archaeology and literature.
Current trends in scholarship investigating various social and
political "peripheries" have favored the development of internal
discourses that originate within so-called margins and define themselves
in their own cultural terms. (In this reorientation, terms with
pejorative connotations, much like the Levant, have often been
reclaimed). At the same time, scholars of postcolonial and subaltern
theory have also suggested overturning the dominant discourse and even
provincializing Europe itself. Similarly, rethinking regions such as the
Levant as central to academic inquiry and re-conceptualizing Europe and
other historically dominant regions as provinces may prove worthwhile.
This reformulation may prove relevant to the Levant, whose geographical
and conceptual maps, boundaries, and groupings have long been drawn with
a Eurocentric pencil. Framing the Levant as a category of analysis
creates a unique platform with novel possibilities for academic
discussion and can trigger productive debate and theoretical and
empirical scholarship on the Levant and Levantines in various
geographical and historical contexts.
Re-conceptualization of the Levant as a useful category of
analysis and classification could problematize and possibly reshape
conceptual maps of the region by taking various subaltern perspectives
into consideration, and posit the Levant as an active agent rather than
as a passive object.
The Editorial Board welcomes scholarly debate on the symbolic
and theoretical significance of the Levant as well as on the political,
social, and cultural manifestations of reality for the people of the
region. The journal looks to publish articles that engage contemporary
academic discussions on relevant socio-political topics including (but
not limited to) processes of religion and secularization, the
construction of memory, literary and linguistic streams, the migration
of knowledge and people, consumerism and commercial networks,
globalization, and the study of nationality and trans-nationalism.
JLS publishes articles focused on the modern era, which begins,
symbolically, with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. This date
symbolizes the realization of Western fears of a clash with the Muslim
and Eastern (Oriental) world on the one hand, and on the other the
diverse and symbiotic social processes between religions and
people—including the migration of ideas, art, people and goods—which
continue to define the development and character of the Levant. As such,
we adopted a chronological focal point that pays tribute to the history
of the region and avoids the traditionally Western notion of 1492 as
the watershed moment for global diffusion.
Volume 1
Summer 2011
Winter 2011
Volume 2
Summer 2012
Winter 2012
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