Introduction: towards a cross-disciplinary history of the global in the humanities and the social sciences

Abstract

The interdisciplinary analysis of historical and contemporary global issues with increasingly productive flows of theories, concepts, methods, and practices is a principal goal in global studies. However, within the humanities and the social sciences, the idea of the 'global' is often restrained by disciplinary boundaries, with scant dialogue and transference between them. The present special issue addresses this fundamental gap by historicizing the notion of the 'global' in an interdisciplinary dialogue, with approaches from history, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, art history, and media and communication studies. Our objective is to gain greater insights on the global approach from several disciplines and to let their borrowings and contributions emerge.