The research interests of AZIMUTE are materialized in two Workshops :

1 – The Workshop of Middle Eastern Studies is supervised by Murilo Sebe Bon Meihy.

He develops academic training of undergraduate , Master and PhD students in the areas of the history of the Middle East, North Africa , and Arabic and Islamic cultures in general, emphasizing the relations between history and culture, between the 16th and 21st centuries. The main subjects discussed are: the political Arabic vocabulary, the historic and epistemological production of the Muslims, the cultural and post-colonial studies, as well as the history of the Arabs in Brazil.

2 – The Workshop of Russian literary and theatre studies is supervised by Henrique Buarque Gusmão.

This workshop regards the study of the Russian cultural production in the decades immediately before and after the Revolution of 1917, a period of great effervescence to the literary and theatrical arts, by three guidelines: 1) analysis of artistic and intellectual works at the ambient of dispute of the Russian culture of the turning of the 19th century, given the contact between artists and critics and issues that mobilized their alliances and disputes; 2) studies on the contact between Russian, European and American artists, that consisted of the circulation of foreign models, consumed and discussed by Russians, as well as a direct dialogue between artists of different regions of the world, for instance the correspondence between Turguniev and Flaubert; 3) analysis of the reception of the Russian works of the period in Brazil, from literary fiction to theatrical models and critical studies that assuredly marked the trajectory of Brazilian thinkers and artists from the 20th century, especially in the theatrical production, concerning the protagonism of Constantin Stanislavski, Vsevolod Meierhold and Mikhail Tchekhov.