Dawn of the Declared Dead? On the Intellectual and Other Reasons for Launching a New Journal on the Middle East

periodical appears—in this case, a new academic online journal on the Middle East: Is this needed? It’s not only out of modesty that the journal’s future readers, and not its editors, should be the ones to answer this question. Nevertheless, this first issue gives us, as editors, the opportunity to introduce the original idea that led us to launch Middle East – Topics and Arguments, present its main aim and scope—and, of course, elucidate why specific attention is being devoted to the intellectual in its first key issue. There were two main concerns that sparked our early discussions, looking back two years to the editorial team’s formative meetings. The first question was: How can these as-yet largely, especially in Germany, independent disciplines, all under the umbrella of Middle Eastern studies but with their diverging histories and research approaches, be brought together in academic cooperation? Obviously, the crucial task here is the quest for interdisciplinarity, not just in theory but in application. As a step in the process of overall academic reorientation—not only in the humanities— interdisciplinarity has become a leading idea, which has surely found as many advocates as it has critics. In our personal case, interdisciplinarity is part of our immediate academic environment, as all of us are affiliated with the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Marburg University, with its seven different subject areas ranging from ancient Near Eastern studies, Semitic studies, Islamic studies, and Arabic and Iranian studies, to Middle Eastern politics and economics. Due to this combination of expertise, not only the research objects themselves are often highly heterogeneous, but also the methodologies applied to the very same object may diverge strikingly—not to mention the various historical timeframes addressed. As a matter of fact, communication and exchange processes between the different disciplines—especially when entering into a joint project—are naturally characterized by contention and by conflict-provoking controversies. But at least in our case, friction has often led us to highly inspiring and productive debates that occasionally birthed an exciting idea—like this journal. However, Middle East – Topics and Arguments is not only itself a product of these interdisciplinary exchanges, but also a manifestation of its leading thoughts: Our experiences led us to create a platform that actually welcomes the previously mentioned dialectics of friction and inspiration caused by interdisciplinary thinking. This allows for the clash of differing Fachkulturen (disciplinary cultures), as the editorial