https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/1046 2026-10-27T19:12:36Z 2026-10-27T19:12:36Z Caruana Dingli, Petra https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150469 2026-10-26T13:41:49Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Recovering women's voices : Pietro Dusina's apostolic visitation to Malta in 1575 Authors: Caruana Dingli, Petra Abstract: This essay re-examines the apostolic visitation conducted by Monsignor Pietro Dusina in Malta in 1575, with particular focus on how women feature in his report. Women were not merely the passive subjects of reform in sixteenth-century Malta, but active participants who conformed but also struggled with the changes being introduced across the Roman Church as whole. The essay first looks at the broader context of Dusina’s visit and then examines the experiences of monastic women, as well as tertiary and secular women, in relation to Tridentine reforms. In recovering these fragmentary voices, the report is revisited as a historical source through which the presence and roles of women – at once visible and obscured – and the challenges that they faced, can be more fully understood. Dusina’s visitation aimed to assess the state of the Church in Malta and to implement the decrees of the Council of Trent. This paper analyses how women were both included and excluded in Dusina’s visitation report, within the ecclesiastical and social context of the sixteenth century. Traditional historical narratives centred on male experiences and largely marginalised women. Exploring perspectives that were often sidelined, widens and enriches our understanding of the past. Recovering women’s lives and experiences can adjust our understanding of early modern Maltese society, particularly in terms of gender roles and power relations.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Aquilina, Aaron https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/150170 2026-10-16T13:35:30Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Macaronic Mediterranean : the queer fluidities of the eighteenth-century imagination Authors: Aquilina, Aaron Abstract: Taking my cue from a neglected play – Robert Hitchcock's The Macaroni. A Comedy (1773) – I explore the compelling and contradictory nuances of its titular figure, both as a particular dramatic character and as a sweeping cultural phenomenon at the latter end of the long eighteenth century. As a cultural icon, the macaronis were young men who turned themselves, through their language, mannerisms, and ludicrous fashion, into a counter-image of British self-perceptions. At a particularly volatile period in history when the Empire was invested in consolidating Britishness, the macaronis threatened to wash it all away by importing a distinctly Mediterranean perspective to bear on various facets of British identity. The macaronis' attack-by-parody took to task, especially, contemporaneous imaginaries around masculinity, and they were in turn derided, even dehumanised, for their flamboyant play with gender. Considering their provocation as one which takes the form of clashing conceptual borders (geographical, political, temporal, gendered), this article undertakes a queer-historical perspective in examining eighteenth-century British relations with the Mediterranean region, its sea, and its linguistic landscape. Ultimately, this essay examines how this relation's visual-semiotic framework foregrounds a poetics of fluidity upon which any constructed solidity is mere display. As a character, Hitchcock's macaroni, pointedly named Epicene, is an unhappy one, trapped between the demands of conventional masculinity and the appealing liquification of gender binaries. He, too, will have his say occasionally, if we can hear him against what his author intended.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149950 2026-10-13T06:21:50Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Antae : A Journal of Creative Writing, Vol. 10(1) Abstract: 1. Safety Stop: In Praise of Analog Boredom; 2. Permanent Red O; 3. House Hunting The High Life; 4. The High Life; 5. μ (mu); 6. A beckoning cat meets Karma; 7. White flags; 8. Foreign language; 9. Recipe for a cult-like following; 10. It’s definitely a day for work, not play, so don’t be tempted; 11. Entelechia; 12. Archives for everyone; 13. Wringing out loud; 14. Resolution; 15. Heaven or Las Vegas; 16. Molly Bloom goes to the beach; 17. (In the distance); 18. (Space of time); 19. Erasing peace; 20. Moments beyond; 21. A good, simple life; 22. Business plan; 23. The Stranger; 24. The Little Boy With No Eyes; 25. Nucelus; 26. The Friend; 27. A Perfectly Wrapped Up Mess; 28. Night Haiku; 29. The Death of Leonidas; 30. Anatomy of Distance; 31. Sometimes if we are lucky; 32. If Language Be The Food Of Love; 33. The Martyrdom of Njal; 34. Iron and Sap; 35. The Walnut; 36. Atone; 37. Viewing Unions; 38. Zoom; 39. Notes on Contributors

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/149944 2026-10-13T04:59:27Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Safety stop : in praise of analog boredom Abstract: I started and abandoned director Wong Kar-Wai’s 2000 classic film In the Mood for Love three separate times last year before finally finishing it. It was at the top of every ‘best films of the 21 Century’ list and my most trusted film buff friends raved about it, but I couldn’t “get into it”. Not until I powered off my cellphone and gave the movie my full attention (required because it is a Cantonese/Shanghainese film subtitled in English) did I slip under its spell. [excerpt]

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z