The University of Buffalo, in the state of New York, will be the seat from April 15 to 17 of the 20th International Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society North (NACS), which is entitled “Survival, Resistance, Rebirth”. This is the twentieth uninterrupted edition of a conference in which topics such as history and literature in the 20th and 21st centuries will be debated; the seventy years of the work of Joan Sales Uncertain Gloria; or how language reproduces national narratives and colonialism, as well as the treatment of queer studies in Catalan literature and culture, among others.
Experts from different universities in the United States, in addition to the one in Buffalo, such as Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Nevada, Massachusetts, Utah and Indiana, as well as speakers from the University of Valencia, Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Girona or the British universities in Bristol and Cambridge are participating in the congress.
The main speakers of the colloquium will be:
Beautiful Olid (University of Chicago): “A language that I desire. Limits and possibilities of thinking in Catalan”
James Hawkey (University of Bristol): “‘To Live on the Border Is to Live Without Barriers’: Migration, tourism and identity in Andorra”
Raul Garrigasait: “Ghosts of Ramon Llull”.
The conference, which has the support of the Ramon Llull Institute, will close on the afternoon of the 18th with the presentation of seven recently published books by Catalan authors. This year, and as a novelty, a previous meeting of doctoral students in Catalan studies at universities in the EE has been organized. UU., which will have the participation of 12 students from universities such as Yale University, Georgetown University or the University of Massachusetts.
Created in 1978, the NACS is a professional association of academics and students that encourages and promotes the study of the Catalan language and culture in the North American academic field.
On the other hand, the Association of Young Researchers in Catalan Language and Literature (AJILLC) will celebrate during the same dates, from 15 to 17 April, its annual conference at the Universidad Rovira i Virgili (URV), in Tarragona. Several professors from the Llull Network will participate in this ninth conference and the inaugural lecture will be given by Jordi Ginebra, professor of the Department of Catalan Philology at the URV, on Baldiri Reixac’s most famous phrase: Language, school and politics in Catalonia in the 18th century.
This conference highlights the contributions of new researchers in the field of Catalan language and literature and strengthens the relationships between university institutions from all over the world interested in Catalan studies. In addition to various round tables, 59 communications from the field of linguistics and literary studies will be presented by young researchers.
