University of Malta gets funding for Mediterranean arts programme

The Department of English at the University of Malta has been awarded Erasmus+ funding in order to host an intensive programme entitled ‘Mediterranean Imaginaries: Literature, Arts, Culture.’

The programme builds on the foundations laid by the Writing the Mediterranean programme that the Department hosted in 2013 and 2014, and for which it was also awarded similar funding.

The upcoming programme is set to take place in 2017 and 2018, and it will bring together academics and students from seven different universities, namely: Goldsmiths (UK), Nova Gorica (Slovenia), Minho (Portugal), Cagliari (Italy), Florence (Italy), Carthage (Tunisia), and Malta.

The programme includes two intensive spring schools to be hosted in Malta, two postgraduate symposia to be hosted in Malta and London, and a number of events and publications such as lectures, seminars, poster sessions, workshops, and special issue journals, which will be held in all the partner countries.

These activities will maximise the impact and reach of the ideas and scholarship generated by Mediterranean Imaginaries, to the benefit of academics and students working in, on, and around the Mediterranean.

Participants in the programme will explore and study Mediterranean literature, film, and a large array of texts from different periods, engaging with the cultural encounters, clashes, and exchanges of the region. They will study how these, in turn, affect national and regional literatures through a research network that operates at transnational level, sharing and confronting ideas, practices, and study methods.

The programme will foreground and explore openness and hospitality in relation to those experiencing political strife and aims to develop receptivity and understanding of different cultures, both in the participants who are directly involved, as well as in the wider communities in which they live and work.

The Department of English offers hundreds of students a stimulating and wide-ranging academic experience at both undergraduate and postgraduate level on an annual basis. It offers specialisation in diverse areas such as literary theory, contemporary literature, comparative literature, cultural studies, romanticism, modernism, postcolonial studies, posthumanism, the post-literary, and linguistics, the Department is committed to a standard of excellence in teaching and research.

For further information please view: https://www.um.edu.mt/arts/english