Going Mediterranean: A Journey to the Mediterranean Studies Association

ABSTRACT: Mediterranean studies is often a destination for scholarship, rather than a point of departure. That is the case in this essay. At the outset of her academic career, the author sought a larger field of inquiry than her discipline could accommodate. Undeterred, she turned to curriculum development as a means of expanding disciplinary boundaries. But her interdisciplinary teaching practice isolated her from her departmental colleagues on the one hand, and met with resistance on the other hand from colleagues in other disciplines who resisted designing the shared objectives needed for good interdisciplinary programs. A chance decision to attend the first conference of the Mediterranean Studies Association introduced her to the focused approach to interdisciplinary studies that she had sought in her own work with linguistic and literary studies.