Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/797847
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 12 MARCH 2017 39 This Week Talk in Paris marks 50th Anniversary of the Death of Laurent Ropa THE research unit that focuses on the Languages and Cultures of North Africa and Diasporas (LaCNAD) at INALCO in Paris recently hosted a talk by Adrian Grima on Laurent Ropa's 'Medi- terranean humanism'. This event marked the 50th anniversary of the death on 29 March 1967 of Laurent Ropa, the French-Mal- tese writer of Gozitan origin who was brought up in Constantine, in colonial Algeria. The talk was attended by aca- demics and BA, MA and Ph.D students of Inalco and was fol- lowed by a discussion. Inalco, the National Institute for Orien- tal Languages and Civilizations, which was founded in 1832 and is recognized as a grand étab- lissement, the mark of France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions, has a longstanding relationship with the Department of Maltese in the Faculty of Arts of the Uni- versity of Malta. Grima teaches a course on Maltese language and literature, 'Initiation au Maltais', at Inalco. The talk held on March 7, 'Au- tour de l'utopie méditerranéenne dans les littératures coloniales: Le cas de Laurent Ropa', explored the various historical and discur- sive contexts of Ropa's writings about Maltese language and liter- ature and Mediterranean culture in the 1930s in Melita and other papers and periodicals published by the European communities in North Africa, like Annales af- ricaines: revue hebdomadaire de l'Afrique du Nord. Grima's mul- ticontextualist reading offered an overview of Ropa's connec- tions, among others, with Gabriel Audisio of the École d'Alger, the algérianiste Robert Randau, and literary figures in Malta engaged in the development and recogni- tion of the Maltese language and its literature. Twelve BA third year students of Maghrebi language and litera- ture attended this year's unit on Maltese language and literature given by Grima. They were intro- duced to the history and current use of the Maltese language, with a focus on developments in pho- nology, morphology, vocabulary, and literature. Grima teaches Maltese litera- ture and representations of the Mediterranean in the Depart- ment of Maltese of the University of Malta. Adrian Grima with the students of Initiation au Maltais at Inalco in Paris