Foreword

Abstract

Like so many other geographical cum socio-cultural regional spaces or 'rims' (e.g. Asian Pacific Rim, Europe, Latin America, Euro-America, Sub-Sahara Africa, Eastern Europe or the Eastern Mediterranean), the region called 'Euro-Mediterranean' that the Selmun Seminar-the brainchild of Ronald Sultana of the University of Malta-seeks to construct must be viewed as being indeed an imaginary construction. As such, and given the protean nature of the hyphenated term 'EuroMediterranean,' Humpty Dumpty' s approach to the problem of definitions would, I venture to say in retrospect, have made life easier for Dr. Sultana and his co-workers in organizing the first Selmun Seminar, and ourselves in passing judgment on the outcome of this ambitious venture, namely, the edited collection of the papers given at that memorable first gathering of 'Mediterranean scholars' in Malta in the summer of 1999.