The launch of the book will feature an introduction by Prof. John London (Director, Centre for Catalan Studies) and a discussion of the book in relation to present debates about the impact and cultural value of satirical cartoons and their study, featuring the author Dr Rhiannon McGlade (Catalan Research Fellow, QMUL) and cartoonist Tim Sanders (Common Knowledge). Free event followed by a wine reception.

15 February 2016
5.30pm - 7.30pm
John Smith's Bookshop
Queen Mary University of London
329 Mile End Road
London
E1 4NT

Please confirm your attendance via the following link.

The book will be on sale at the shop at a 30 per cent discount.

About the book

In a world increasingly dominated by visual sensation, our understanding of the role and influence of comics and cartoon humor in popular culture has become essential. This book offers a critical and cognitive focus that captures the changing fortunes of Catalan humour production against the shifting political landscape in the period 1898–1982. It considers how Catalan satire has been influenced by periods of relative calm as well as censorship, violence, war and dictatorship, and among its key features is its presentation of a continued cartooning tradition that was not ended by the installation of the Franco dictatorship, but which rather continued in a number of adapted forms, playing its own role in the evolution of the period. Thus, as well as introducing the most representative cartoonists and publications, the Catalan example is used to explore broader aspects of this complex communication form, opening new avenues for cultural, historical and socio-political research. 

About the author

Dr Rhiannon McGlade is a Research Fellow in Catalan Studies at Queen Mary University of London, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.

About Tim Sanders

Tim Sanders is a cartoonist and illustrator and has worked for a range of publications including, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, Private Eye, The Oldie, TheThe Times Higher Education Supplement, El Periódico and many more. Sanders is also a Spanish speaker and a scholar of Hispanic art.

About the Centre for Catalan Studies at Queen Mary

The Centre for Catalan Studies at Queen Mary, which was opened on 6 March 2006, has been established with support from the Institut Ramon Llull to promote and consolidate Catalan studies research in the UK, taking advantage of Queen Mary's prominent position in the field.

The Centre will contribute to the institutionalisation of Catalan Studies in British universities, to its reproduction as a discipline through the training of new researchers and through the strengthening of links between Catalan studies researchers coming from a variety of disciplines (from linguistics to sociology, from literature to political science, etc) in the UK, Catalonia, the EU and the US.

The Centre will further UK Catalan Studies' interdisciplinary orientation, by promoting research with a strong theoretical grounding so that it may intervene in today's big debates in the humanities, around issues such as subjectivity, identity and representation; gender and sexuality; globalisation, national identity and linguistic/cultural diversity; intercultural communication; high/mass culture, etc. We wish to vigorously promote the cross-fertilisation between the Humanities and the Social Sciences.

Catalan language, culture and literature has long constituted part of Queen Mary's curriculum within the Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies, which forms part of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film. As one of the most prestigious languages departments in the United Kingdom it is well ahead of the national average according to tables published in the last Research Assessment Exercise. Queen Mary is one of the only two universities in the UK where there is a post dedicated exclusively to Catalan studies.

The Centre will take advantage of London's key position as an international meeting point to develop exchanges between Catalanists from the UK, US, Catalonia and EU, as well as creating synergies with other Universities in the capital, where research in Catalan is conducted, or may be developed in future.

The Centre for Catalan Studies is supported by the Institut Ramon Llull, whose mission is to promote Catalan language and culture internationally, in all of its varieties and forms of expression.