Cover of: Historical Interactions of Religious Cultures

Historical Interactions of Religious Cultures (HIReC)

Managing Editor: Volker Leppin (New Haven)

Editors: Alexander Fidora (Barcelona), Markus Friedrich (Hamburg), Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann (Zürich), Thomas Kaufmann (Göttingen), Volker Leppin (New Haven), Sabine Schmidtke (Princeton), Rebekka Voß (Frankfurt)

Advisory Board: Maribel Fierro (Madrid), Katharina Heyden (Bern), J. Michelle Molina (Evanston), Omer Michaelis (Tel Aviv), David Nirenberg (Princeton), John Tolan (Nantes), Alexander Treiger (Halifax), Katja Triplett (Göttingen)

ISSN 2941-4172 (Print Edition)

ISSN 2941-4180 (Online Edition)

In view of the growing societal interest in interreligious exchange, conflict processes, and intercultural osmoses, scholarly efforts to "liquefy" the study of religions have intensified, conceiving of them as dynamic phenomena that constituted, configured, and evolved in permanent processes of interaction with other religions. This perspective on interreligious interaction is the thematic focus of the newly founded journal Historical Interactions of Religious Cultures (HIReC), with reference to the three major monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the pre-modern period, from the seventh to the eighteenth century.

Interaction is understood as any relationship between at least two of the religions mentioned or with a third religious tradition. The religions are treated not as closed, fixed entities, but as a context of traditions and practices whose interactions with, among, and against each other formed a multifaceted spectrum ranging from ideational transfer to physical conflict. The term "religious cultures", which is not intended to be sharply demarcated, recognizes that while the religions themselves might have sought clear distinctions, "open margins" and hybrid forms are a central moment in the history of interreligious interaction.

The journal project is based on the premise that the study of interreligious interaction frequently transcends the competencies of the disciplines concerned, for example, the history of the church and Christianity, the history of religion, Jewish Studies, Islamic Studies, and Arabic Studies. The time frame chosen cuts across common periodisations and spans the millennium between the emergence of Islam and the rise of modern colonialism. The envisaged geographical framework corresponds to the spread and expansion of the three monotheistic religions, creating a global perspective.

HIReC provides an international forum for research in the field of the history of relations and conflicts between the major monotheistic religions in the pre-modern period, with the interdisciplinary nature of the journal fundamental to the enterprise. The contributions should therefore be interdisciplinary, that is, aim not only to reconstruct single-disciplinary internal perspectives, but also to trace the repercussions of interreligious interactions on the cultures involved.

The interdisciplinary and international editorial board will ensure the quality of the contributions and also bring expertise to broadening disciplinary perspectives. The editors are supported by an advisory board that is likewise international and interdisciplinary. All contributions will be subject to double-blind review and will be published Open Access under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license, at no costs for authors and readers. This is funded by the Subscribe to Open (S2O) model and relies on the willingness of libraries to subscribe to the journal.

Open Access

Since 2024 HIReC has appeared in open access under a CC license as part of a subscribe-to-open model (S2O).
The subscribe-to-open model (S2O) is fair and sustainable, being based on tried and tested structures and existing partnerships between the publisher and a journal’s institutional subscribers. The institutional subscriber base enables the transition to open access and thus free access for all readers by simply continuing the subscription as before. If the required threshold of institutional subscribers is not reached in a given year, the following volume will be published again behind the paywall in order to ensure the long-term economic stability of the journal. There is no article processing charge (APC) for contributors and publication in an S2O journal is free of charge. Users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link or use the full texts of the articles for any lawful purpose in accordance with the CC license without first obtaining permission from the publisher or author. This is in line with the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access.