INQ-177 | Nine Worlds in Three Islands: 7000 Years in Malta

Topic Description:

What is it like to live on an island in the center of the Mediterranean Sea? What was it like 5,000 years ago? And during the Crusades? How did the immensely powerful Knights of Malta, who ruled there for almost three centuries, shape today’s culture? How does this ancient society that is and is not Middle Eastern, North African, and European identify and assert itself as a nation? Three tiny islands floating between Europe and Africa, Malta offers a culture reflecting millennia of global connections and conflicts.  The islands have been Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and British -- and twice the target of world-changing military sieges.  Though its second national language is now English, the native tongue is a unique Sicilian-Italian-Arabic in Latin alphabet. As we study the islands' multifarious experiences from 5200 BCE to today, we will develop and research some of the questions its sites suggest, questions about the relations between faith and culture, religious and secular politics, migration and identity, geography and geopolitics.

Course Types Offered: Travel

Topic Approved: April 2016