The new website Studying and Teaching the Mediterranean is dedicated to things Mediterranean during the better part of the region’s history, the pre-modern period: roughly from the beginning of recorded history in Antiquity to the advent of modernity in the age of the Enlightenment.

Its goal is primarily, although not exclusively, didactic. The focus is on “studying to teach.” The website aims to be a one-stop shop for college and university teachers providing them with content, insights, and tools, ready-made or adaptable, for developing and infusing Mediterranean content in surveys or topical courses in Western or World history, geography, culture, religion, and literature, as well as in specialized surveys or advanced courses with specifically Mediterranean subject-matters. Research-heavy content is and will be represented to the extent it supports the site’s didactic orientation; the site offers a searchable field taking the visitor to online or other resources where that kind of material is better represented.

The site is intended to be in a kind of a permanent “under construction” state, that is, it does not aim to provide complete, polished, tried-and-tested teaching modules, lesson plans, literature reviews, bibliographies, or syllabi. Rather, it plans to remain an informal platform where any bits and snippets of didactic material, however small, is welcomed. The site’s visitors are encouraged to share bits and pieces of their own, contributions and criticism of any didactic experience they have, to enrich the platform’s informational and educational value.

The kernel of this site are the contributions of the participants in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in Mediterranean Studies. It is being hoped to grow the site, with the help of educators of all stripes, in conformity with the NEH mission of supporting the spread of humanitarian knowledge among successive generations of students and the general public.