The Western Mediterranean Culture Workshop addresses the cultures of five regions/countries (France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and North Africa, including parts of the Ottoman Empire). It deals with literatures in at least eight languages – Arabic, Catalan, French, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish – as well as visual arts, music, and other forms of cultural production. The workshop involves faculty members and graduate students from a variety of background and disciplines, including many from the Departments of Romance Languages and Literatures, Art History, Music, and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

The purpose of the workshop is to bring together faculty and graduate students working on areas of the Western Mediterranean during the medieval and early modern periods in order to develop a broader picture of historical, linguistic, artistic and literary currents and exchanges in a site of enormous cultural ferment. The workshop emphasizes the movement of people, ideas, motifs, and objects among the different parts of the region. This forum encourages graduate students to consider their work in a broader context and gives them the opportunity to get important feedback from colleagues in related disciplines. Graduate student papers are pre-circulated before the workshop meetings.

Regular meetings are held on Wednesdays at 4:30 in Wiebolt 106, at The University of Chicago. For further details of events, see the calendar.

The workshop’s faculty sponsors are Niall Atkinson of the Art History Department (nsatkinson@uchicago.edu) and Miguel Martinez of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department (martinezm@uchicago.edu) (Persons in need of assistance should contact the workshop coordinator, Chloe Pelletier, at cmpelletier[at]uchicago[dot]edu.