Our Mission

Ilex Foundation promotes the study of humanistic traditions that derive from the civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Near East, from the second millennium BCE to the present. Ilex is a non-governmental organization dedicated to purely intellectual agenda.

Traditions

The key word is “traditions,” oral as well as written, with an emphasis on the historical contexts of performance or text production. The plural of “traditions” draws attention to the Foundation’s strong interest in the detailed study of variation itself as a cultural phenomenon.

Stressing the need to examine cultures on their own terms, the Foundation especially supports research that is language based and text based; also, it encourages the application of comparative methods that fully engage the details of “thick description.” Points of special interest for comparison include

• Models of classicism vs. “locol color”
• Canonical vs. multiform traditions
• The rhetoric the poetics of cultural and cross-cultural constructs,
  such as Hellenism, “Rum”, Islam, Shi’ism

The Foundation is dedicated to the active dissemination of the research it promotes, seeking new models of publication that allow for a workable coexistence of hard-copy and electronic versions. Ilex is committed to the general goal of revitalizing the intellectual mission of academic publishers by freeing them from constraints imposed by the mentality of material profit. The application of information technology is an integral part of the Foundation’s strategy for achieving this aim.