On Friday, May 29, the colloquium “Nationalisms, Cultures, and the Politics of Language” will take place at the University of Chicago. This conference, which will bring together specialists in Iberian languages and literatures from Europe and North America, has a double objective: to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Catalan Studies Chair Joan Coromines, as well as to honor its founder and director, the professor Mario Santanaon the occasion of his retirement after 31 years of service at the university.
The conference, organized by the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies Program of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, will feature several round tables in which colleagues and former students of Santana who have developed their own academic careers in the field of Iberian studies will participate, as well as former guests of the Joan Coromines Chair. It will also include a poetic reading, the screening of the documentary move by Pere Portabella and the musical performance by Borja Penalba.
The tireless work of Santana during the last three decades has been key to rethinking the studies of the Iberian Peninsula in the United States, moving from an almost exclusive orientation towards the Spanish language, literature and culture to a perspective that recognizes the plurilingual and multicultural Iberian reality, with an increasingly relevant presence of Catalan, Basque and Galician studies in academic programs.
Throughout his career, Santana has achieved the recognition of Iberian linguistic and literary diversity, building bridges between North American academia and the cultural institutions of the peninsula. Thanks to agreements with the Ramon Llull Institute and the Etxepare Basque InstituteSantana managed to implement at the University of Chicago a broad and stable curriculum of Catalan and Basque studies, as well as chairs of visiting professor Joan Coromines and Koldo Mitxelena. Today, the academic offer in Catalan studies at the University of Chicago is one of the most extensive in all of North America, and the university is one of the three American centers that have a minor (mention of degree) in Catalan studies.
Santana has also participated in international networks and held leadership positions that have consolidated the position of Catalan studies in the United States. At the University of Chicago, he has been university representative and associate dean of the Humanities Division, among other positions. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association (MLA) between 2014 and 2019 and president of the North American Catalan Society (NACS) between 2017 and 2022. In short, Santana’s career has represented an absolute commitment to Iberian studies in all its linguistic and cultural richness, characterized in turn by academic and personal excellence.
The Joan Coromines Chair of Catalan Studiescreated in 2005 through an agreement between the University of Chicago and the Ramon Llull Institute, makes possible the annual presence of a visiting professor who teaches a course for both undergraduate and postgraduate students. The chair is named after the outstanding philologist and medievalist Joan Coromines, who was a professor at the University of Chicago between 1946 and 1967. Directed by Professor Mario Santana, the chair complements the minor in Catalan studies offered by the Department of Romanic Languages and Literatures. Throughout its twenty years of experience, specialists from various fields of the humanities and social sciences have participated in it, such as Xavier Pla, Dominic Keown, Helena Buffery, Peter A. Kraus and Eulàlia Miralles. The most recent guest professor has been Jaume Subirana (Universidad Pompeu Fabra), who has taught the course “Literary Polysystems in Spain: Literature, Language, and Place”.
