Catalan Studies Program
The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures offers students a two-year Catalan program which includes elementary to advanced language and culture courses. Language courses provide students with a solid foundation in patterns of spoken and written Catalan, and are aimed at developing speaking, listening, writing, and reading skills. In addition, through the Joan Coromines Visiting Chair of Catalan Studies, the program offers courses in Catalan literature, culture, history, and contemporary society; as well as quarter and year-long study abroad opportunities in Barcelona.
Catalan is the language of about ten million people, and has a rich contemporary literature associated with a strong cultural tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. It has official-language status in the Principality of Andorra and in the autonomous communities of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, and Valencia. It is also spoken in the eastern fringe of Aragon, the Roussillon in southwestern France, and in L'Alguer, Sardinia.
Catalan culture with its significant contributions to literature, art, and architecture, a substantial social and political history, and a modern society that has developed is close interaction with the construction of nation-states? features prominently in contemporary debates about "minority" cultural, linguistic, and political formations. It thus provides a fertile and exciting ground for interdisciplinary study and research in such areas as language, literature, and art history; cultural, societal, and political identity; linguistic policy and multilingualism; citizenship and nationalism; and immigration and globalization.