Stanford University

Catalonia: A European Fight for Democracy

Audio Transcript of "Catalonia: A European Fight for Democracy."
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In the past five years, the Catalan independence movement has fought in courts and tribunals throughout Europe to confront impositions and restrictions from Spain. Following the referendum in 2017, Spain implemented massive surveillance programs in an effort to defeat the movement for Catalan independence. But the will of the Catalans for independence is apparent in the ongoing legal battles.

A light lunch will be provided.

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by May 12, 2022.

Organized by Professor Joan Ramon Resina, Director of the Iberian Studies Program at The Europe Center.

Gonzalo Boye is a European lawyer working on several cases related to the defence of human and civil rights. He has written several books about his legal work and experiences with high profile clients.
Gonzalo Boye
Gonzalo Boye, lawyer and author
Gonzalo Boye, lawyer and author

New Scholars Corner video: Identity Politics

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Scholars Corner is an ongoing SPICE initiative to share FSI’s cutting-edge social science research with high school and college classrooms nationwide and international schools abroad.

This week we released “The Rise and Implications of Identity Politics,” the latest installment in our ongoing Scholars Corner series. Each Scholars Corner episode features a short video discussion with a scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University sharing his or her latest research.

This Scholars Corner video features New York Times bestselling author Francis Fukuyama discussing the recent rise of identity politics, both in the United States and around the world. “In the 20th century we had a politics that was organized around an economic axis, primarily. You had a left that worried about inequality…and you had a right that was in favor of the greatest amount of freedom,” summarizes Fukuyama. “[N]ow we are seeing a shift in many countries away from this focus on economic issues to a polarization based on identity.”

According to Fukuyama, this shift in politics is reflected in such domestic social movements as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, as well as in international movements like the Catalan independence movement, white nationalism, and even the Islamic State.

The rise of identity politics may have troubling implications for modern democracies. “In the United States, for example, the Republican party increasingly has become a party of white people, and the Democratic party has become increasingly a party of minorities and women. In general, I think the problem for a democracy is that you’ve got these specific identities…[but] you need something more than that. You need an integrative sense of national identity [that’s] open to the existing diversity of the society that allows people to believe that they’re part of the same political community,” says Fukuyama.

“That, I think, is the challenge for modern democracy at the present moment.”

To hear more of Dr. Fukuyama’s analysis, view the video here: “The Rise and Implications of Identity Politics.” For other Scholars Corner episodes, visit our Scholars Corner webpage. Past videos have covered topics such as cybersecurity, immigration and integration, and climate change.

"Identity" hardcover book by Francis Fukuyama "Identity" hardcover book by Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama is a Senior Fellow at FSI and the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. This video is based on his recent book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, which was recognized as The Times (UK) Best Books of 2018, Politics, and Financial Times Best Books of 2018.

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Scholars Corner video featuring Francis Fukuyama discussing identity politics
Francis Fukuyama discusses identity politics in SPICE's latest Scholars Corner video.
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Catalan Poetry: Poetry recital, books, and Roses

Right after Albert Serra’s talk, come to celebrate the Day of the Book & Rose, a Catalan Cultural and Literary Festival, coinciding with the anniversary of Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ death. There will be books, roses, and live recital of Catalan poetry!

Catalan Cultural Festival. Sponsored by the Iberian Studies Program at The Europe Center, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Modern Thought & Literature, and The Stanford Catalan Association.

Oregon Courtyard (adjacent to Pigott Hall)

Building 260, 450 Serra Mall

Symposiums

Albert Serra: Paradigms of Change in Contemporary Cinema

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Claiming that Contemporary Cinema is currently in its most interesting creative moment since the 60s, laureate Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra will discuss its evolution throughout the 21st Century in terms of form, methodology and perception, as well as its future possibilities.

Catalan Cultural Festival. Sponsored by the Iberian Studies Program at The Europe Center, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Modern Thought & Literature, and The Stanford Catalan Association.

Pigott Hall - Room 252

Building 260, 450 Serra Mall

Lectures

Story of My Death: Film Screening

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Famous lover Casanova, now long past his prime, meets Count Dracula during a journey to Transylvania. Story of my Death is a dark and erotic retelling of their encounter , the Enlightenment ceding to Romanticism, akin to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò.

Story of My Death poster

Catalan Cultural Festival. Sponsored by the Iberian Studies Program at The Europe Center, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures, Modern Thought & Literature, and The Stanford Catalan Association.

Pigott Hall - Room 113

Building 260, 450 Serra Mall

Film Screenings

2-Day Conference: "Inscribed Identities: Writing as Self Realization" (Day 2)

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Faculty Organizer:  Joan Ramon Resina (jrresina@stanford.edu)
Graduate Student Coordinators:  Gabriela Badica (gbadica@stanford.edu) and Pau Guinart (guinart@stanford.edu)

 

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE for DAY 2:

 

Saturday, May 13:


SESSION 5:  9:15AM-11:15AM, Moderator:  Laura Menéndez Gorina

Laurie McNeill (University of British Columbia)
Co-opted Identity: "Anne Franks" and Frameworks for Testimony

Antonio Monegal (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
The Novel as Life Writing: Fiction and Testimony in Jorge Semprún and Imre Kertész

Joshua Landy (Stanford University)
Saving the Self from Stories: Resistance to Narrative in Primo Levi's Periodic Table

SESSION 6:  11:30AM-1:00PM, Moderator George Rosa-Acosta

Oscar Jané (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Self-Writings and Egodocuments.  Personal memoirs in Catalonia (16th-19th century)

Linda Rugg (UC Berkeley)
Painting Faces:  The Swedish Brothers Hesselius and the Ecology of Life-Transformation in 18th-Century North America

 

Sponsored by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages; the Stanford Humanities Center; and The Europe Center's Iberian Studies Program

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa Street
Stanford, CA 94305

Conferences

Closeness and manuscript culture

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Why devote a special issue of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies to closeness and manuscript culture? What, we might ask, can the medieval period teach us about questions of technology, practice, mediation, proximity and the self that cannot be adequately addressed through an examination of the contemporary? What can medieval books teach us about the growing suite of technologies by which we now give shape to and reckon with our world?

One might reasonably imagine that there is little to be learned from our medieval ancestors. Our learned habit, when we look to the distant past at all, is to turn to the classical period for guidance and then, perhaps with a bit less enthusiasm, to the Renaissance. It is a story of genius and rediscovery, separated by a centuries-long gulf of darkness and superstition. And while for the Iberian Peninsula this story has held less influence thanks in large measure to Andalusi achievements (and those who make them known), there is yet a strong sense that a world such as ours can have no real connection to that of ibn Quzmān or Ramon Llull. The medieval world, we are told, is a centered and stable world, and God is everywhere. Ours, on the other hand, is largely unprecedented and contingent: God has vanished, only to be replaced by simultaneity, genocide, climate change, mass migration, techno-biopolitics and the theoretically endless state of exception generated by global (and intersecting) wars on drugs, poverty and terror.

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The Current Social and Political Challenges in Catalonia: An Unprecedented Process

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The social and political process that a significant part of Catalan society is engaged in needs to be explained analyzing its origins some ten years ago and its current state of development. At present no one can reasonably predict the future evolution and eventual outcome of this impressive democratic challenge to twenty-first century Europe.

Photo of Professor Salvador Cardüs

Salvador Cardús is a professor of sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the current Ginebre Serra Visiting Professor in Catalan Studies at Stanford's Division of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures.  His research interests include identity and immigration, sociology of religion, mass media and culture, nationalistic phenomena and the epistemology of the social sciences. Cardús' recent work is on the shaping of a new paradigm to study contemporary identity processes and the challenges of fragmented societies in the global order as a means to negotiate recognition while avoiding difficulties of self-definition.

Salvador Cardús Professor of Sociology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Ginebre Serra Visiting Professor in Catalan Studies, Division of Literatures, Languages and Cultures Speaker
Lectures

Musical Dialogue with Jordi Savall

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Join the Catalan conductor and multi-instrumentalist for a free lecture and demonstration of Turkish and Iberian traditions with musicians Hakan Güngör and Yurdal Tokcan.

TO RSVP FOR THIS EVENT, PLEASE SEND EMAIL TO: davisr@stanford.edu

Co-sponsored by Stanford Live, The Europe Center's Iberian Studies Program and the Mediterranean Studies Forum.

Jordi Savall Catalan Spanish viol player, conductor and composer Speaker
Lectures
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