Linguistic Cultures and Communities in Europe Past and Present: Building the Eurotales Museum

The course (now in its 5th edition) invites students to collaborate in building our innovative Museum Lab EUROTALES, aimed at representing and preserving the languages spoken in Europe now and in the past in their variety and dynamic relationship with the European territory, and to acknowledge, describe and preserve the linguistic culture of Europe outside narrow national boundaries, and based on active citizenship. 

Students in this CIVIS course will learn about the linguistic cultures of Europe by preparing materials for both the physical and virtual museum venues of Eurotales. Eurotales is both a Sapienza incorporated Museum Collection and a subproject of Calliope (CAsa delle Lingue e delle Letterature In OPEra).

It is also a member of the international network of language museums (ICON) and it works with AND - Ambienti Narrativi Digitali srl for digital processing, data collection, and the website. All of these entities are stakeholders in the project.

• What are the main issues in trying to describe languages, and how to address them?
  
• How do languages relate to people and places?
• How can the memory of orality be retrieved and preserved?
• How to account for linguistic cultures outside the canon?

• Appreciation of the multicultural and multi-layered nature of linguistic history within European territory
  
• Recognition of multilingualism and multiculturalism in communities and nations
  
• Insight on how language shapes history, identity and culture
• Knowledge of how languages live and are shaped within different geographic spaces
• Retrieval of linguistic genealogies within individuals, past and present
• Retrieval of the memory of languages in objects and places
• Investigation of the linguistic dimension of cultural heritage
• Fieldwork research methods experience
• Presenting academic knowledge to the public (outreach)
• The evaluation will be carried out by the coordinators in participating institutions and will consist of an assessment of the work submitted by students.

• 04 January – arrival in Rome
• 05 January – visit to the Museum illustration of the latest project & students’ presentations (morning, afternoon)
• 06 January – students’ presentations 10-12; Invited lectures/ presentation of the Itineraries
• 07 January - Roma Museo Diffuso (find out if we can find earphones)
• 08 January - Wall of Words and other activities (theatre, music)

• greetings and introductions
• EUROTALES Museum Laboratory Concept and Collections [PPT lecture]
• break
• Course Syllabus and Moodle Platform
• Resonances Present – questionnaires
• distribute email list and make WhatApp group for the class

• for 9 October, please complete two questionnaires on Excel
• for 6 November, please complete the remaining 18 questionnaires and upload on Moodle

• Traces - What are they? - template (PPT lecture)
• break
• Resonances of the Past - What are they? - Template (PPT lecture)
• discussion of First Questionnaires - Q&A

• Research and Resources (Resonances Past and Traces) (PPT lecture)
• break
• Discussion of choice of Resonances Past and Traces.

• Making itineraries from Traces and Resonances Past: themes, areas, people (PPT lecture)
• Literary Cities (PPT lecture)
• break
• Division into Working Groups on Traces and Resonances Past: discuss topics, and
• bibliography.

• students break up in groups and exchange their drafts of Resonances Past. Class time is spent reading and commenting mutually on drafts.
• break
• students discuss the Itinerary themes and Literary Cities they are considering to choose

• students present the Itinerary themes they are considering to choose
• discussion of Traces

• students break up in groups and exchange their drafts of Traces. Class time is spent reading and commenting mutually on drafts;
• general discussion on issues and problems in the drafts.

• discussion of issues and problems to fix in written work - Q&A
• final revisions of Resonances Past, Traces, and itineraries due 7 January

• planned Activities in Rome - Students’ proposals for further activities
• drop-in office hour

By the end of the online part, we expect students to hand in the following work:

• 20 questionnaires recording data on linguistic biographies (20 Resonances Present);
• either 2 ‘Traces’ and 1 ‘Resonance Past’ or 2 ‘Resonances Past’ and 1 ‘Trace’;
• a short thematic itinerary proposal with map and images inviting the public to visit an ideal itinerary across different Resonances and Traces, or an itinerary through a Literary City, intended eventually for museum display. The itinerary should include a paragraph elaborating its relevance to the memory of the Voices of Europe and suitable images (copyright free)

Students will be assessed on participation in online and in-person seminars and on the quality of their research in the following percentages:

• 20% - participation in virtual and in-person seminars and workshops
• 15% - field work for Resonances present
• 45% - 3 historical Traces and/or Resonances
• 20% - collaborative linguistic itinerary project

Students are expected to participate actively in sessions, peer review each others’ work, engage on a collaborative itinerary and present the results of their individual research in both oral and written forms. We will be evaluating each of these components based on whether they have understood the goals of the different museum collections and how much effort they have put into their various research opportunities, as well as on their participation individually and collectively in seminars. 

Since we accept both undergraduate and graduate students, we have differentiated evaluation criteria for the research components. Undergraduates must master basic research skills and develop their projects together with our guidance. The results must be clean on a formal level and competent in the mastery of approach and bibliography. 

From graduate students we expect something beyond mastery of research skills. Graduate students must develop a new individual approach to their subjects that goes further than what is known in the research area. If students satisfy these criteria, they will pass the course, or receive an appropriate passing numerical grade if their university requires.

Motivation Letter

Level of english (According to CEFR)

CV

Applications will be evaluated based on:

• interest in the project and in fieldwork
• good knowledge of English
  

• Giulia Fabbiano, Anthropologist, Aix-Marseille Université (France)
  
• Domenica Minniti Gonias, Italianist, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece)
• Nadia Cannata, Romance languages and Philology, Sapienza Università di Roma (Italia), Director, Eurotales
• Lorenzo Bartoli, Renaissance Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain)
• Roxana Utale, University of Bucharest (Romania)
• Leila Maziane, Historian, Université Hassan II de Casablanca (Morocco)
• Salem Mokni, Historian, University of Sfax, (Tunisia)
• Maia Gahtan, Kent State University, Florence campus (co-director of EUROTALES)
• Margaret Sonmez, METU, Ankara (co-director of EUROTALES)
• Dragana Kazandjiovska, Sapienza Università di Roma (Italia)
• Riccardo Vannuccini, Artestudio, Rome - Actor and theatre director
• Francesca Ferri, musician

Our partners include linguisticians with expertise in a wide variety of languages, an anthropologist with expertise in the relations between Algeria and France, and two north African institutions.

Blended Intensive Programme

This CIVIS course is a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP): a new format of Erasmus+ mobility which combines online teaching with a short trip to another campus to learn alongside students and professors across Europe.

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