Interlingual Research Center: Memories, Identities, Territories (ERIMIT)

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Presentation

The ERIMIT team is one of the four research teams of the Rennes 2 Faculty of Languages. It brings together 28  researchers from multifaceted linguistic and cultural backgrounds based on the concepts of memories, identities and territories, which maintain the group’s cohesion and coherence. The work of the research unit therefore aims to develop quality work in different disciplinary fields around these three themes, to cross-reference and compare the approaches and social, historical and cultural realities of the geographical areas concerned, in an intercultural perspective that is accepted and enriched by an expertise that comes from mastering linguistic tools and accessing primary sources in the languages of origin.

ERIMIT has five components: Chinese Studies; Russian Soviet and post-Soviet Studies; Research Group on Austria and Germany (GRAAL); Language Knowledge and Imagination in the Arab World (LASIMA); Research on Spanish and Portuguese Speaking Spaces (REEHL). The team provides scientific support to the faculty’s different Master’s degree courses in foreign languages and cultures for the areas studied, including three in the dual degree programme with Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) for the ETILA Master’s degree, Fudan University for the Master’s degree in Chinese Studies, and the University of Fez for the Master’s degree in Arabic studies.

Research Topics

The ERIMIT components work around two themed research topics: Territories of the Imaginary and Imaginaries of Territory and Migrations, transfers, changes. These fields of research are divided into study days, colloquia and seminars – specific to the components or transversal – which contribute to joint deliberations around our specializations:

  • Amerindian otherness and imaginary topology of American space; space as an identity marker (supported by IUF/ANPOLL-Brésil, CNPG-Brésil, Institute of the Americas, IDA)
  • Poetics of migration (Spain, Latin America, Maghreb, Eastern Europe)
  • Conflicts and identities: memory issues (Spain, Eastern bloc, Latin America)
  • Heritage and representations
  • Arts, representation and transmission (“scholarly” art in China, street art, change and protest)
  • Language in the digital age, the word as embodied action: interaction and motivation
  • Cultural representations applied to international relations (applied foreign languages)

The team is also involved in international projects (Cancionero, Romancero y Fuentes financed by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF); with Brazil in the project History, Circulation and Analysis of Literary, Linguistic, Artistic and Social Discourses; with Spain for Street art: physical territories, virtual interactions (UCM); ECOS project with Chile. It regularly welcomes postdocs or researchers from around the world to the Americas Chair of the Institute of the Americas (IDA-Rennes) and within the framework of its international partnerships (Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Tunisia, Spain, Germany, China).

 

Key Figures: 28 lecturer-researchers / 31 PhD students (over a third of whom are co-supervised)

 

N.B.

The biannual journal Amerika is a forum for debate on conflicts of interpretation relating to the singularity of the American peoples, in a space with permeable and shifting borders. It is particularly interested in the Americas from the 19th century, but also appreciates the diachronic views that take the present as an anchor point.