About the Journal

Global Antiquities (GA) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal seeking to promote academic work that engages Classicists, Ancient Historians, and Archaeologists in dialogue about global issues, both historical and contemporary. Poverty, war, xenophobia, nationalism, migration, terrorism, imperialism, racism: these are major issues in global history shaped powerfully by the contexts in which they occur. GA publishes original research, book reviews, translations, and commentaries by scholars seeking to understand and illuminate global issues through time, from antiquity to the present day.

Scope and Aims

This interdisciplinary journal unites the sources, approaches, and methodologies of Classical Studies, Ancient History, and Global Studies. Its mission is predicated on the belief that global issues are not only transnational but also transhistorical: mobility, inequality, precarity, and violence, as well as the connection and disruption associated with uneven flows of people and power through space and over time operated within the ancient world as much as in the modern. Many aspects of the current, global arrangement of nations, peoples, and resources have come into existence through historical processes that can be traced back to the various “antiquities” of human civilization. As a result, the study of ancient sources can enrich our understanding of today’s global issues, and the study of these issues can help uncover similar processes at work in antiquity. But looking backwards in history to ostensibly similar issues perpetuates the illusion of continuity and permanence as well as the assumption that knowledge can simply be extracted from ancient texts and easily transferred into modern contexts. On the contrary, comparisons of this sort require careful contextual analyses and creative re-readings of frequently referenced ancient sources. Global Antiquities seeks to provide a venue for scholarship in this spirit.

Our journal’s aims are (1) to develop interpretive tools and methods, and to provide models of scholarship for those wishing to write new scholarly accounts of antiquity informed by contemporary studies of globalization and its effects; (2) likewise, to develop interpretive tools and methods, and to provide models of scholarship for those wishing to elucidate today’s global issues through comparative, transhistorical analyses invoking the ancient past; (3) to facilitate collaborative, multidisciplinary work in this vein among scholars in ancient studies and the social sciences.

Topics

Global Antiquities welcomes submissions from Classicists, Ancient Historians, Archaeologists, and scholars in related fields, that bring their research into dialogue with contemporary Globalization Studies, as well as from post-Classical Historians, Political Scientists, Theorists, and Philosophers, Anthropologists, Sociologists, and other social scientists and humanists whose work on global issues engages with the ancient past.

We view as “global” those features of human societies throughout history that cross real or imagined boundaries (geographic, chronological, cultural) and destabilize the primacy of the “state” or “nation” as the fundamental unit of analysis in world history. These “global” features are sometimes described processually as “flows” or “movements”, at other times statically as “systems” or “structures”. We seek work that challenges historical narratives of separateness rooted in a national imaginary, with narratives of interconnectivity and mobility made possible by globalization. Global Antiquities therefore invites submissions on a broad range of topics including (but not limited to):

  • poverty, inequality, enslavement, human rights
  • war, peace, terrorism, diplomacy
  • state formation and development; interstate networks, commerce, and governance
  • ancient and modern identities (esp. the role of antiquity in configuring post-Classical identities)
  • perceptions and expressions of difference (e.g. in gender, race, religion, ethnicity, ability, nationality, sexual identity, etc.)
  • nationalism, indigeneity, citizenship, xenophobia
  • migration, mobility, displacement
  • center, border, and periphery
  • constructions and propagations of culture (esp. across borders)
  • illness and public health (including mental health); disability studies
  • imperialisms; colonization; exploration and geography
  • climate change, the environment, environmental justice
  • organization, structures, and movement of knowledge; technology in society
  • social movements and activism
  • transnational organizations (including criminal) and movements
  • perceptions of and attendance to basic needs and threats thereto (e.g. drought, famine)

We also welcome proposals for edited special issues bringing together articles on a single subject. Prospective editors should consult the Submission page for proposal guidelines and further instructions.