Resumen de Past, present, and future of Catalan history in North America
The article examines the origins of the study of Catalan history in North America, primarily at U.S. universities. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, few writers drawn by what the historian Richard Kagan has called “the Spanish craze” paid attention to Catalonia as distinct from the rest of Spain. In the first half of the twentieth century, art historians and historians at U.S. universities wrote the first histories of Catalonia with special attention to the medieval period, and to a lesser extent, the Spanish Civil War. Since the 1960s, Catalan history has established a small though not insignificant presence in North American history departments, especially in medieval history. The article considers why these non-Catalan historians turned to Catalan history, whether their numbers have fallen in recent years, and the future of the field. Although their numbers may be at an all-time high, the decline of positions in European history means that for this presence to continue future specialists of Catalan history may need to rebrand themselves as specialists as well in expanding fields like environmental, gender, or world history. More financial support from the Catalan government is also essential to encourage foreign scholars to work on Catalan history.
