Catalan Language Program

Courses

CATA 12200 Catalan for Speakers of Romance Languages I

This course is intended for speakers of other Romance languages to quickly develop competence in spoken and written Catalan. In this introductory course, students learn ways to apply their skills in another Romance language to mastering Catalan by concentrating on the similarities and differences between the two languages. Although familiarity with a Romance language is strongly recommended, students with no prior knowledge of a Romance language are also welcome.

 

CATA 12300 Catalan for Speakers of Romance Languages II

This course is intended for speakers of other Romance languages to quickly develop competence in spoken and written Catalan. In this intermediate-level course, students learn ways to apply their skills in another Romance language to mastering Catalan by concentrating on the similarities and differences between the two languages. This course offers a rapid review of the basic patterns of the language and expands on the material presented in CATA 12200.

 

CATA 21301 Llengua, Societat i Cultura III

This advanced-level course will focus on speaking and writing skills through the study of a wide variety of contemporary texts and audiovisual materials. It will provide students with a better understanding of contemporary Catalan society. Students will review problematic grammatical structures, write a number of essays, and participate in multiple class debates.

 

CATA 21302 Llengua, Societat i Cultura IV

This advanced-level course will focus on speaking and writing skills through a wide variety of texts and audiovisual materials. We will study a wide range of Catalan cultural manifestations (e.g., visual arts, music, gastronomy). Students will also review advanced grammatical structures, write a number of essays, and participate in multiple class debates.

 

CATA 21600 Catalan Culture and Society: Art, Music and Cinema

This course provides an interdisciplinary survey of contemporary Catalonia. We study a wide range of its cultural manifestations (architecture, paintings, music, arts of the body, literature, cinema, gastronomy). Attention is also paid to some sociolinguistic issues, such as the coexistence of Catalan and Spanish, and the standardization of Catalan. This course will be conducted in English.

 

CATA 21950 “Dark Stairways of Desire”: Lusting beyond the Norm in Contemporary Catalan Literature

“Although we can find a significant number of authors exploring queer desire and identities throughout the history of Catalan Literature (from lesbian scenes in Joanot Martorell’s Tirant lo blanc to expanding gender identities in Maria Aurèlia Capmany’s Quim/Quima), more recent Catalan Literature is blooming with queerness and non-normative lust. This course will give an overview of contemporary Catalan works influenced by feminist and queer debates from the seventies on. Beginning with renowned poet Maria Mercè Marçal’s only novel, The Passion According to Rennée Vivien, winner of several of the most prestigious literary awards for Catalan Literature, we will go on to discover 21st century’s works by Eva Baltasar and Anna Punsoda. We will also read poems, short stories and excerpts from authors such as Maria Sevilla, Mireia Calafell, Raquel Santanera, Sebastià Portell, Sil Bel and Ian Bermúdez, among others.”

 

CATA 23333/CATA 33333 Reading Catalan for Research Purposes

This fast-paced course prepares students to read and do research using texts in Catalan. Students will work on grammar, vocabulary and reading skills, and they will also get introduced to some translation strategies. Part of the texts students will work on will be academic texts in their respective areas of research. This course may fulfill the graduate language requirement in some departments.

 

CATA 25323/CATA 35323 The Other Catalonias: Representations of Immigration in Catalan Literature

In this course we will discuss a number of Catalan texts, dating from the 1930s to 2016, on the experience of immigration and its social, cultural, and subjective impact. Representing a variety of genres, these texts will allow us to get a grasp of the complexity of a phenomenon that challenges binarisms such as us/them or foreign/native, and problematises concepts such as origins, roots, home, authenticity, citizenship, sameness and difference. We will explore the link between the representations of immigration and issues such as trauma and mourning; memory, the past and the future; national identity; gender and sexuality; the construction of discourses about identity and otherness in Catalan culture; how immigration interlinks with language conflict, and how it is framed by various linguistic ideologies; what role the subject of immigration plays in the political conflict between Catalonia and Spain; how the literature of the ‘new Catalans’ is transforming existing notions of Catalan identity; and whether we can speak of a “post-migrant condition” in Catalan literature and culture.

Josep-Anton Fernàndez

 

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