In Memoriam

The JMGS editorial team grieves the loss of two remarkable colleagues who, as the stellar first two editors of the journal, established its high standard of excellence.

William Hardy McNeill (October 31, 1917–July 12, 2016; JMGS Editor May 1983–October 1985) was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago and a prolific historian with an interest in exchanges between civilizations and an exceptionally broad geopolitical vision. When the MGSA launched the biannual JMGS in May 1983 as part of the organization’s larger project to establish a viable discipline of Modern Greek Studies in North America, Professor McNeill was chosen to serve as its first editor; he stepped down in 1985 to become the president of the American Historical Association. By virtue of his stature, Professor McNeill brought wide visibility that was critically important to the nascent publication. He attracted submissions from senior figures whose work spanned a wide variety of disciplines. The JMGS’s first issue of volume 1, a special issue on “Women and Men in Greece: A Society in Transition,” for example, signaled the strong interest in the social sciences in addition to literature, which at the time was the backbone of the field in Europe. Professor McNeill published three volumes of the JMGS between 1983 and 1985, assisted officially by Peter Bien as Associate Editor and unofficially by his wife, Elizabeth Darbishire, in the detailed work of correspondence and editing. Highlights of his tenure were the introduction of book reviews with volume 2; theoretically informed writing on literature with a comparative dimension; and articles on anthropology and linguistics. Under Professor McNeill’s stewardship, the JMGS emerged as the flagship publication in the field.

Ernestine Friedl (August 13, 1920–October 12, 2015; JMGS Editor May 1986–October 1990) was James B. Duke Professor Emerita at Duke University and an anthropologist who helped innovate the ethnographic study of gender in Europe. As Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University from 1980 to 1985, Professor Friedl oversaw the establishment of the program in Women’s Studies and the hiring of a cluster of senior faculty in the English Department who were representative of the cultural turn in the humanities. Besides her accomplishments as an administrator, she was widely recognized as one of the pioneers of anthropology in Greece. As the JMGS’s second editor, she produced five volumes from 1986 to 1990, a period of major changes in the academy. Working with Peter Bien (1986–1990) and Paschalis M. Kitromilides (1988–1990) as Associate Editors, she encouraged scholars to submit papers that would, in her words, “contribute not only to Modern Greek Studies but also to the analytical approaches and theoretical issues” in their own disciplines. She placed that work in dialogue with current scholarship elsewhere in the humanities and social sciences, inviting scholars in and beyond Modern Greek Studies to comment on the articles published in any given issue, particularly on methods of analysis revealed through the treatment of a particular topic, or on controversial viewpoints. In these and other ways, Professor Friedl helped shape not only the routines and structures of the journal’s day to day work but also its intellectual purpose.