The International Colloquium Communication and Culture   
in Romance Europe (CICCRE)           
the XIII^th edition, June 13-14, 2025,           
West University of Timișoara   

Crises in the Romance World.     
A Multidisciplinary Approach

Call for papers

Organized by the West University of Timișoara, the International Colloquium Communication and Culture in Romance Europe (CICCRE) brings together scholars (academics, researchers, PhD students) to explore fundamental aspects of Romania’s complex evolution. As a multidisciplinary event dedicated to the Romance world, each edition explores issues that intersect not only various geographical areas and historical periods within this rich cultural space, but also contemporary concerns. Each edition of the colloquium engages specialists from various fields – philology, history, cultural studies, musicology, religious studies, and art history – in analysing significant themes related to the Romance cultural space. The XIIIth edition of CICCRE (June 13-14, 2025), themed Crises in the Romance World. A Multidisciplinary Approach, investigates crises within this diverse cultural landscape from multiple disciplinary perspectives.

With its vast linguistic and cultural diversity, the Romance world has experienced numerous crises throughout history. Whether cultural, social, political, economic, or identity-related, these crises have profoundly shaped societies and individuals, emerging from complex interactions between historical, economic, social, cultural, and political factors. Understanding them requires a multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary approach that identifies the connections between these various dimensions. At the same time, crises provide an opportunity to rethink development models. Mapping the very concept of crisis demands a diverse and layered research framework, one that is both concentric and expansive in its scope. At the core of every crisis lies culture, which remains a fundamental element in both the experience and resolution of instability. In this regard, Thomas de Koninck’s perspective on the dynamic interplay between crises and culture provides a valuable conceptual pathway into the theme of this conference.

Furthermore, almost every moment in history can be perceived as a crisis, each with distinct reverberations shaped by its specific context, circumstances, and motivations. Despite the common tendency to associate crises with destruction, fragmentation, or dissolution, historical, linguistic, political, and social perspectives reveal that crises often signal evolutionary change. Alberto Manguel, in Mientras embalo mi biblioteca: una elegía y diez digresiones (Packing My Library. An Elegy and Ten Digressions), reflects not only about the power and impact of reading on our lives, but also about its intrinsic value. A writer of crises – both written and lived – Jean Carrière, commemorated two decades after his passing, constructs in his novel La Caverne des pestiférés (The Cavern of The Plague Victims) a narrative that also serves as a means of resolving crises. Fernando Pessoa’s Carta a Adolfo Casais Monteiro, written ninety years ago, also explores this theme. Expanding on the concept of stato di eccezione (“state of exception”) – as analysed by Giorgio Agamben and, in a different register, Dario Gentili – one can perceive crisis as a catalyst for profound social and personal transformations (Taciti Annalium libri, e.g.). Edgar Morin’s transdisciplinary approach further examines the antinomic connotations of crisis, highlighting how individual and collective introspection emerge from moments of rupture. How else could intercomprehension have emerged if not from a crisis – an identity crisis, above all – stemming from the loss of the spirit of place? Celebrated this year, the First Council of Nicaea (325 AD) was itself a resolution to a profound theological and doctrinal crisis. Similarly, the life and work of Thomas Aquinas, whose birth likely occurred 800 years ago (c. 1325), can be seen as a succession of crises overcome in the pursuit of intellectual and spiritual clarity. Oedipus, as envisioned by George Enescu (commemorated seventy years after his passing), encapsulates inner crises through a wide spectrum of artistic expressions. Likewise, Brâncuși’s work – the focus of the previous edition of this conference, dedicated to biographical narratives – serves as a benchmark for the ways in which successive crises elevate and refine human existence.

Only a few key aspects have been briefly outlined here, inviting participants to analyse, clarify, and further develop them over the two days of the colloquium. All those interested in the proposed theme – academics, researchers, and PhD students – are encouraged to reflect on this complex topic and, in light of its multiple challenges, to submit papers for the sections dedicated to Romance linguistic, literary, and cultural spaces: Latin language, literature, and culture; Romanian language; Romanian and comparative literature; Romanian as a foreign language; French language and literature; Italian language, literature and culture; Portuguese language, literature and culture; Spanish language, literature and culture; Translation studies; Intercomprehension in Romance languages; Didactics of Romance languages; History and cultural studies; Music and theatre; Visual arts; Book and library studies.