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"I'm glad I am a woman who once danced naked in the Mediterranean Sea at midnight"; this evocative and sensual image of the Mediterranean was drawn by the American actress Mercedes McCambridge (1916-2004). The same waters in which McCambridge bathed in the nude lapped the shores – centuries earlier – from where the myth of the birth of Europa emerged and from which, subsequently, the continent is meant to have acquired its name. The Mediterranean was and continues to be at the heart of a variety of crossways, including those of the imagination. The MA in Mediterranean Studies is meant to serve as a compass to assist the curious and enterprising to chart their own course into the dazzling unity and diversity of the Mediterranean region.

This MA is an innovative interdisciplinary programme of studies offered by various departments from within the Faculty of Arts of the University of Malta; the participating departments include History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Geography, History of Art, International Relations, Oriental Studies, Philosophy and Sociology.

The accent in this MA will be on the thematic: the importance of phenomena like migrations, urbanisation, isolation, connectivity, the human and the physical elements, the arts and so on, will be explored. There will be an emphasis on the ever-malleable boundaries between the local, the regional and the global: thus, while in the sixteenth century the Spanish soldier Antonio Vázquez defined the Netherlands as a land where produce had ‘neither juice nor taste', today Italy – a land hugged by the Mediterranean sun – needs to import nearly 50,000 tonnes of fresh tomatoes from the same Netherlands. Such developments blur the traditionally-accepted – and expected – lines of history, geography and culture. Furthermore, key debates such as the idea of a ‘clash of civilizations' will be addressed by placing them in a context of engagements of cultures, which is the only way in which Jewish-Christian-Muslim (and other) human encounters can be properly understood.

In essence, this MA will seek to aid students to understand that ‘Mediterranean' is much more than just an adjective, such as the fabled or maligned ‘Mediterranean lifestyle'. The Mediterranean will be considered on its own terms, as a focal point of action, but always in relation to the wider world.