Mourad Romdhani – Ph.D. candidate in English Literature from the University of Sousse in Tunisia
CEMAT (Le Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines à Tunis) is excited to announce that Mourad Romdhani, one of five 2015 GGR (Grant for Graduate Research in the U.S.) scholars, arrived at the University of Mississippi this July to kick-start his U.S. scholarly campus experience with participation in a conference on William Faulkner. Mr. Romdhani, a Ph.D. candidate in English literature at the University of Sousse, who is working on “The idiom of silence in William Faulkner’s major novels,” is currently conducting research at the University of Mississippi’s special library collection on William Faulkner’s work. He will travel to Virginia later in his research trip to conduct research at the William Faulkner Society in Virginia. Within the first days of his U.S. campus experience, Mr. Romdhani was able to meet leading U.S. scholars on Faulkner, an essential element of this grant program to build lasting ties between Tunisian and American scholars on scholarly subjects, topics and disciplines of mutual interest.
Mourad Romdhani at the University of Mississippi seated next to a William Faulkner statue, July 2015.
Since 2005, CEMAT has been administering this unique program. Funded by the Public Affairs Section/Tunis, scholars are selected on a competitive basis to conduct short-term research at universities in the United States. In the last decade, CEMAT has facilitated the research of 40 Tunisian scholars in the U.S. under this program, beginning with one grantee in 2005, increasing to 8 grantees in 2012 cycle and 5 grantees in each of the last two years. The grantees are Ph.D. candidates in disciplines related to American Studies (literature, law, business, social science, economics, language pedagogy, among others) or professors working on curriculum development. Grantees consult special collections or work with specific American professors who have influenced their own work. The GGR program gives Tunisian scholars a unique opportunity to work with scholars in the U.S., experience American campus life and make use of facilities and materials not available in Tunisia.
For over two decades, CEMAT, the American Overseas Research Center in Tunis, has worked closely with the Public Affairs Section at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia to promote U.S.-Tunisian scholarly and educational exchanges. CEMAT is the only U.S. research institute in Tunisia and has been a central institution for both American and Tunisian scholars, students and researchers. Since its foundation, CEMAT has hosted and facilitated the work of U.S. Fulbright scholars, American Institute for Maghrib Studies grantees, Social Science Research Council scholars and other.