ARQUS International Seminar
Universidad de Granada (Departamento de Filologías: Románica, Italiana, Gallego-Portuguesa, Catalana).
Target group: advanced Bachelor students (Spanish, Italian or Portuguese) and Master students of Romance Studies in Graz and Granada.
Lecturers: David Porcel Bueno, Victoriano Peña Sánchez, Anna Suadoni, Alessandra Sanna (Granada), Katharina Gerhalter, Stefan Koch, Fausto de Michele (Graz), Dainius Būrė (Vilnius).
The multilingual seminar dealt with diverse aspects of cultural and linguistic contact within the Mediterranean region (between the Iberian and Apennine peninsulas), thus broadening the horizon of single language studies (Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian). The topics in linguistics were contrastive and the topics in literature were comparative. Since the courses were held in Italian and Spanish, intercomprehension was encouraged.
The detailed program can be downloaded here.
This seminar is organized in the framework of the Arqus International Forum on Romance Studies(AIFRS)(https://www.arqus-alliance.eu/news/granada-first-international-seminar-romance-philology). Some of the students received an Arqus Twinning grant.
Here you can find the Arqus report (in English) on the seminar.
Feedback from students:
"Ha sido un privilegio poder participar en un seminario como este, dirigido por docentes competentes en la materia. En definitiva, una gran oportunidad para adentrarse en el ámbito de las lenguas romances y profundizar sobre conocimientos ya familiarizados, así como abrir puertas a otros nuevos" (estudiante del Grado de Lenguas Modernas y sus Literaturas en Granada)
"Overall, the seminar presented in an extremely interesting way how closely the Romance languages are connected not only in a linguistic sense, but also in a literary sense. Especially for students who only knew one Romance language, intercomprehension was strongly promoted during this week. I remembered positively, for example, the fact that the lecturers came from different universities. I also noticed that the professors usually made a special effort to provide students who only understood one Romance language with content from the other languages by designing the PowerPoint slides in different languages or by alternating between the languages used in the discourse. Furthermore, I found especially the city tours through the different quarters of Granada very appealing and hope that similar activities are planned in the following seminars." (Romance Studies student from Graz)
"El Seminario para mí ha sido una gran experiencia donde he podido aprender de grandes investigadores y dónde además he podido hacer muchos amigos internacionales. El seminario ha destacado sobre todo por su puntualidad y por el buen trato que hemos recibido durante estos días: respondían a nuestras dudas muy amablemente, algunos días daban meriendas, hacíamos excursiones para conocer la ciudad... Sin lugar a dudas se lo recomendaría a todo el mundo. ¡Estoy deseando que llegue la segunda edición!" (Estudiante de Lenguas Modernas y sus Literaturas en Granada)
"I found the variety of topics interesting (of course, not every topic is for everyone - yet it was a very creative cube of different areas and topics). I also found the city tours very interesting - because here you could also see something of the city and not only the faculty. In addition, I found it well organized in terms of time - so that there was some free time in the morning and lectures in the afternoon with breaks. Of course, the dinner in the university's own location was also a highlight ;)" (Romance Studies student from Graz)