The NACS (North American Catalan Society) annual grant for Catalan studies is aimed at doctoral students from universities in Canada or the United States whose academic background is outside the scope of the Catalan-speaking world. Its goal is to contribute to promoting the professional development of young academics while generating scientific knowledge. The grant has been awarded to Alexandra Mira, a PhD candidate in Literature and Cultural Studies of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese of Georgetown University. Her research focuses on intersectionalities of gender, sexuality and race in pop culture representations on the Iberian peninsula in the 20th and 21st centuries. She also analyses historical memory, nostalgia and the accepted elements of costumbrismo and cutrismo (trashiness) represented in working class culture from a transnational perspective. Her PhD thesis aims to redefine the concept of cutre through the study of trash culture as a cultural construct arising from neoliberalism and techno-globalisation. The topics covered include Catalan-Caribbean music from its beginnings to the present day (Bad Gyal, Rosalía), queer performance in Barcelona in the 1970s (Nazario Luque, Ocaña) as the salvation of bad taste, and the commodification of nostalgia for trashiness in TV series such as Aquí no hay quien viva.
Since the 2020-2021 academic year, grants have been awarded to the following students: Nathan Douglas (Indiana University), Celia Sainz (University of Massachusetts Amherst) and James Ramsburg (University of Minnesota).
The Balearic Islands Doctoral Studentship in Catalan Studies of the Queen Mary University of London promotes academic research in Catalan studies in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The duration of the studentship is three academic years. The person selected to pursue the PhD in Catalan Studies for the next three academic years is Beth Caygill, whose research project is entitled “Fem i Desfem. Towards a Genealogy of Feminist Catalan Literature; Critical Feminist Translation Practices”. Caygill holds a BA in Modern Languages and Music from the University of Birmingham, where she began studying Catalan language and culture. Focusing on Catalan women’s poetry, and drawing from the interdisciplinary fields of feminist and queer theory, the goal of her research is to situate six Catalan poets (Rosa Leveroni, Maria Mercè Marçal, Mari Chordà i Requesens, Montserrat Abelló, Antonina Canyelles and Dolors Miquel) in the socio-historical landscapes of exile, the Spanish transition to democracy and the fight for women’s rights in Spain. Her thesis aims to analyse the body of feminist Catalan literature and the practice of feminist translation over the three generations in which these authors are situated, adopting a kaleidoscopic approach that goes beyond written texts, encompassing the analysis of translation theories, which have historically been masculinised.
The students who have previously been awarded this studentship are Richard Huddleson and James Chow-Thomas.
The research grant programme of the Institut Ramon Llull is aimed at promoting the professional development of young academics who have completed Catalan studies at universities outside the Catalan-speaking world, thereby incentivising and increasing Catalan studies within the international academic community.
