Dr. Anna Casas Aguilar, Associate Professor of Spanish, received the 2024 Honorable Mention for outstanding work in the field of Catalan Studies by the North American Catalan Society (NACS) with regards to her book Bilingual Legacies: Father Figures in Self-Writing from Barcelona (Toronto University Press, 2022).
The award ceremony took place at the 19th Colloquium of the NACS from April 18-20th, 2024 at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
Bilingual Legacies examines fatherhood in the work of four canonical Spanish authors born in Barcelona and raised during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Drawing on the autobiographical texts of Juan Goytisolo, Carlos Barral, Terenci Moix, and Clara Janés, the book explores how these authors understood gender roles and paternal figures as well as how they positioned themselves in relation to Spanish and Catalan literary traditions.
Anna Casas Aguilar contends that through their presentation of father figures, these authors subvert static ideas surrounding fatherhood. She argues that this diversity was crucial in opening the door to revised gender models in Spain during the democratic period. Moving beyond the shadow of the dictator, Casas Aguilar shows how these writers distinguished between the patriarchal “father of the nation” and their own paternal figures. In doing so, Bilingual Legacies sheds light on the complexity of Spanish conceptions of gender, language, and family and illustrates how notions of masculinity, authorship, and canon are interrelated.
The North American Catalan Society (NACS), founded in 1978, is a professional association of scholars, students, and people with a general interest in any aspect of Catalan culture (literature, linguistics, film, visual and performing arts, history, and philosophy, among other disciplines). NACS is committed to encouraging and advancing the study of Catalan language and culture in the North American academy. It seeks to foster greater visibility for and dissemination of scholarship in the field of Catalan Studies and serves as a central point of reference, as well as a public voice, for a network of scholars in this field. To this end, the NACS holds biennial colloquia (along with occasional smaller symposia) and publishes the Catalan Review: International Journal of Catalan Culture.
