Our book Sea of Literatures wins the Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Essay Collection, 2025
The editors of SEA OF LITERATURES. Towards a Theory of Mediterranean Literature, Angela Fabris, Albert Göschl, and Steffen Schneider, have just informed all the contributors that our book has won the Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Essay Collection, 2025.
“We are happy to inform you that our volume SEA OF LITERATURES has been awarded as the best essay collection on the topic of the Mediterranean 2022-2024 by the Mediterranean Seminar! This was possible because of your profound knowledge and dedication. Thank you again for your contributions!”
The contributors to the volume are: Angela Fabris (University of Klagenfurt), Albert Göschl (University of Graz), Steffen Schneider (University of Graz), Cristina Benussi (University of Trieste), Sara Izzo (University of Bonn), Charikleia Magdalini Kefalidou (University of Strasbourg), Elisabeth Stadlinger (Vienna), Adrian Grima (University of Malta), Daniel G. König (University of Konstanz), Marianna Deganutti (LMU Munich), Karla Mallette (University of Michigan), Sharon Kinoshita (University of California, Santa Cruz), Roberta Morosini (University of Naples “L’Orientale”), Verena Ebermeier and Jonas Hock (University of Regensburg), Marília Jöhnk (Goethe University Frankfurt), Sophia Schnack (University of Vienna) and Daniel Winkler (Heidelberg University), Stéphane Baquey (Aix-Marseille University), Charles Sabatos (Yeditepe University) and C.Ceyhun Arslan (Koç University), Serena Todesco (Zagreb), Iain Chambers (University of Naples “L’Orientale”)
Geographical, fictional and conceptual spaces
It so happens that the day before the award was announced online, I referred at length to the book’s Introduction by the editors in my public lecture on “Towards the Sun and Other Mediterranean Classics,” especially their distinction between geographical, fictional and conceptual spaces in the literary Mediterranean. This lecture was hosted by my colleagues and friends Marija Grech and Stella Borg Barthet and the Department of English as part of the REMED Spring School 2025.
This is the award citation, which actually mentions Malta. My chapter in this book published by De Gruyter in 2023 is called “Elusive Mediterraneans: Reading Beyond Nation.”
Mediterranean Seminar Prize for Essay Collection
Fabris, Angela, Albert Göschl, and Steffen Schneider, eds., Sea of Literatures Towards a Theory of Mediterranean Literature (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2022).
This interdisciplinary volume engages an urgent theoretical and epistemological question: what is Mediterranean Literature? To answer the question, this volume combines twenty contributions reflecting diverse vantage points on the sites, texts, peoples, and ideas from which Mediterranean Literature can be written. The volume is organized around 4 engaging themes: 1) Memories and Identities, 2) Social and Linguistic Spaces, 3) Fictional Spaces, and 4) Conceptual Spaces. As the section titles suggest, each study develops space as a lens through which to understand Mediterranean literature and/or literatures of the Mediterranean. In addition to the conceptual and theoretical positionings elaborated in individual articles, collectively the volume provides a valuable bibliography of Mediterranean literature, from classical geographers to modern novelists. The diverse contributions show a remarkable cohesion, exploring Mediterranean literatures from the medieval to the modern and from Morocco to Malta. Indeed, the volume embodies Horden and Purcell’s characterization of the Mediterranean Sea itself as a site bound by fragmentation as much as by connectivity. Through the diversity of cases and approaches it presents and the engagements of its authors with the frame of Mediterranean literature, it is a collection that represents the best of scholarship “of” the Mediterranean.
The Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection, 2025
The 2025 Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection was open to books published from 2022 to 2024 inclusive. The committee was most interested in collections of essay that break new ground conceptually or methodologically, are comparative and/or interdisciplinary, that emphasize the intercultural/interregional/inter-religious contact, that are “of” rather than merely “in” the Mediterranean, and that are both internally coherent and comprehensive. For source translations and editions, the committee looked for works of an original nature that exemplify or reflect the essential characteristics of the Mediterranean as a region, and which are prefaced by a comprehensive introduction. Books ranging from any period were considered, with the Mediterranean broadly construed as the region centered on the sea, but including connected hinterlands in Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, the western Indian Ocean, the Near East and Central Asia.
The committee for the 2025 Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection was:
• Brian A. Catlos: Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
• Claire Gilbert: History, Saint Louis University
• Sharon Kinoshita: Literature, University of California Santa Cruz
The committee received numerous entries of extremely high quality, which made our work very difficult. Nevertheless, the committee was unanimous in awarding this year’s prizes.
Thank you to everyone who submitted entries; your scholarship is appreciated, and we wish you continuing successes.
The next round of the Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection will be held in 2028, for books published from 2025 to 2027. The next prize competition, for the Best First Book (published from 2023—2025) will be announced in July.
The Mediterranean Seminar
adriangrima.org 