Our mission is to create and sustain lively scholarly conversations on topics of wide interest across time periods and disciplines so that traditional methods for understanding historical and literary texts meet innovative modes of analysis, argumentation, and publication.
We are against the partitions that would separate the study of the past from an understanding of the present, the lines that cordon disciplines from each other needlessly, the ghettos that unnecessarily compartmentalize cultures, and the separations that attempt to obviate the hybridities that arise when differences meet. We are proponents of collaboration, risk-taking, diligence and creativity. We attempt a capacious exchange of ideas which while attentive to the violence and injustices through which history has been shaped remains affirmative, provocative and experimental.
Our publishing projects typically proceed from GW MEMSI endeavors, but we are always open to proposals. Please contact the institute's director, Jeffrey J. Cohen, if you would like to develop a project.
