The first to begin this autumn was the Josep Pla Chair at Stanford University, with Oriol Ponsatí-Murlà. Under the title Saved in Translation: An Intellectual Topography of the Mediterranean, from Classical Antiquity to Nowadays, this ten-week course examines the Mediterranean as a space of encounter and cultural exchange from classical antiquity to the present. It emphasises how translation — from Greek to Arabic, Arabic to Latin, and from classical to Romance languages — has shaped our understanding of Western culture.” The aim is to chart a cultural topography that demonstrates how these dialogues and translations have formed fundamental ideas of the Western tradition and contributed to their diffusion worldwide.
In September, the first edition of the NACS itinerant chair also begins, hosted at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst from 29 September to 3 October. Led by Professor H. Rosi Song, it combines academic research, public outreach, and gastronomic experience. Song will present the RELISH project (Reframing European Gastronomy Legacy through Innovation, Sustainability and Heritage), which rethinks recipes as educational tools linked to cultural identity, sustainability, and climate change, in a public event in collaboration with the university’s catering services. In addition, she will teach a session in the course Spanish/Catalan 330, Food and Famine in Spanish Literature, and deliver a lecture at the Five Colleges Consortium on gastronomy and Catalan national identity. Her stay will also include consultations with postgraduate students specialising in Catalan Studies.
At the end of September Jaume Subirana (UPF) will participate as Visiting Professor at the Joan Coromines Chair at the University of Chicago, teaching the course “Literary Polysystems in Spain: Literature, Language, and Place”, in which he will explore the rich and diverse heritage of the Iberian Peninsula that has endured throughout history despite the homogenising forces of globalisation. The coexistence of different languages and literatures offers an extraordinary laboratory for cultural research, and what some regard as challenges, peculiarities, or mere curiosities are in fact vibrant and flourishing cultural communities. The course will address the emergence and growth of literary traditions in Asturian, Basque, and Galician, with the aim of reflecting on the concept of “tradition” in contemporary literary practice through the study of three fundamental works of Catalan literature: Mirall trencat, El quadern gris, and Estremida memòria.
From 6 to 10 October, the Mercè Rodoreda Chair at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York will host Eva Codó (UAB) in a seminar that examines language policies implemented in Catalonia over the past decade.
Associate Professor Míriam Cabré (University of Girona) has been invited to the University of California-Berkeley for a teaching residency from 27 October to 19 November 2025. Cabré will take part in the seminar “Culture and Power in Medieval Iberia: The Catalan Troubadours”. She will also participate in sessions with students in Catalan language classes taught by Lecturer Ana-Belén Redondo.
Finally, Marta Anton, Associate Professor at UPF, will teach a seminar on “Picasso y Cuba: (re)interpretaciones decoloniales en el arte y la literatura” (Picasso and Cuba: Decolonial (re)interpretations in Art and Literature) at the Catalan Culture Chair at the University of Havana. The aim of the seminar is to analyse the artistic resonances of Picasso in Cuban visual arts and literature, present in the work of leading Cuban painters and writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In addition to expanding academic exchange in Catalan Studies with leading international universities, these activities clearly align with the strategic priorities of the Institut Ramon Llull to support creators, academics, and intellectuals so that they may participate in and influence debates on major contemporary challenges and emerging trends from their own plural and critical perspectives.
