Erasmus Mundus PhD Scholarship

TEEME
Text and Event in Early Modern Europe
Duration: 36 months
Programme description:
This doctoral programme combines the study of the past with impact on the present. Its principal intellectual concern is the early modern period, understood as lasting from c. 1400 to c. 1700, the foundational age of
the current world order with its political divisions and economic dependencies, in which modern European identities were formed in the context of nation-building, imperial ambition, and colonial expansion. Students on the programme will bring this period into meaningful relations with current issues and concerns by focusing on the enduring traces that early modern texts and events left, and still leave, on today's globalized world. History, literature and culture will be taught and studied as central to the shaping of the future, based on the understanding of past and present interactions of historical narratives, cultural identities, and global economic, social and political processes.
The programme is transdisciplinary in ambition, moving beyond established forms of historical critique and literary study by pursuing innovative and unorthodox modes of intellectual inquiry and advanced methods of
textual, cultural and historical analysis. Each research project will be comparative, double-visioned and interdisciplinary in conception, bear a clear relation to present needs and debates, and span at least two different linguistic, religious and/or ethnic cultures within Europe or beyond, in the period 1400 to 1700, or in later political or cultural uses and representations of early modern literature and history. By relating a broad understanding of 'text' – in its original meaning of tissue, web or texture – to underlying 'events' – the raw data of the past shaped into story by 'weaving' or writing – all projects will combine a textual-literary with a cultural-historical strand.
Our main objective is to prepare a new generation of research leaders, cultural managers and policymakers for the demands of a 21st century in which historical forgetfulness and cultural amnesia threaten the integration of an increasingly interconnected world. By investigating the past from a radical and fully historicized understanding of the present, and by working in international teams, students will acquire the skills and background knowledge necessary to intervene in current debates about global uncertainties and the new worldwide risks faced by culture and society.
Programme participants will benefit from the complementary research strengths of the four principal partners: the University of Kent at Canterbury, with its focus on early modern social history, close textual study, and medieval/early modern transitions; the Freie Universität Berlin, with its expertise in philologies and comparative literary studies, transcultural exchange, and cultural history; the Universidade da Porto, with its strengths in the history of European expansion, literature and utopia, and the study of intercultural
processes; and the Univerzita Karlova v Praze (Prague), with its strengths in critical theory, translation studies, and the history of early modern politics.
In structure the programme aims to set the standard for a 21st-century doctoral programme in the Humanities by combining individual research plans with high mobility, and by enhancing employability prospects through fully integrated work placements in the cultural and creative industries of the four
consortium countries.
Website: http://www.teemeurope.eu/
Partners:
UNIVERSITY OF KENT, United Kingdom (Co-ordinating Institution)
FREE UNIVERSITY BERLIN, Germany
UNIVERSITY OF PORTO, Portugal
CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE, Czech Republic
Contact:
Professor Bernhard Klein
School of English
Faculty of Humanities
University of Kent
Canterbury CT2 7NX
United Kingdom
b.klein@kent.ac.uk