On-going Events

Guest Lecture Series
RECIPROCAL GAZES ON CATALONIA

The study of the interplay of literature, cultural tradition and identity forms the basis of this on-going guest lecture series launched in 2009, which focuses on the narratives of multicultural writers. This has been organized as a series of papers to be given at Lancaster, starting 9 February 2009 with J-L Marfany (Liverpool), 'A Cuckoo in the Nest? Castilian in Catalonia, 1500-1870', and continuing on 10 March with Francesco Ardolino (Barcelona), 'Salvatore Quasimodo in Post-War Barcelona'. The last paper to date delivered at Lancaster was on 19 May 2010 'The Spanish Civil War and the Catalan Origins of Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' by Professor Miquel Berga (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). The next forthcoming paper will be 'The Concept of Immobility linked to the representations of Palma' by Dr Mercè Picornell (Universitat de les Illes Balears) (TBA)'. This new initiative is in part a follow-up to the colloquium "Reciprocal Gazes on the Iberian/British Other", successfully organized by F Barberà and K Crameri at Lancaster in 2004. As was the case with the 2001 and 2004 conferences, an anticipated outcome of the 2009-11 series will be the publication of the research papers as a collective volume.

Previous Events

Conference July 2004: Reciprocal Gazes on the Iberian/British Other (Cultural Decline as "Raw Material" for Narrative Excellence)

An international conference held at the
Department of European Languages and Cultures, Lancaster University 3rd July 2004.

Some of the questions addressed in this colloquium included:

• Issues of historical and personal 'truth': exploring the motivations behind the writing of memoirs;


• Transferences and mutual influences between the writing of fiction and non-fiction;


• Relationships between memoirs and other 'non-fiction' genres such as journalism etc;


• The nature of the 'reciprocal gaze' on British and Spanish/Catalan history and identities by writers who are fully immersed in all of these cultures;


• Education, class and ideology as factors in the works under discussion.

For more information on this conference please click here.