The emeritus lecturer Isabel de Riquer, expert on Medieval Romance literature, will open the second edition of the cycle Philology and Communication Thursdays! She will do so on Thursday, February 6, in the room Joan Maragall in the Faculty of Philology and Communication, with the conference “La polémica Aventura de la primera vuelta al mundo”. Polemic because, according to the Italian Antonio Pigafetta in his work First voyage around the world: an account of Magellan’s Expedition –translated into Spanish by Isabel de Riquer–, out of the five ships and more than two hundred men who sailed in 1519, only eighteen men got to finish the journey, after three years of hunger, shipwrecks and betrayals.
 

In this second edition of the cycle there will be a total of ten conferences, from February to June, given by lecturers and researchers of the Faculty who will talk about interesting topics. According to the dean of the Faculty, Javier Velaza, “the good results we obtained in the first edition and the recent name change of our Faculty take us to present a bold and rich proposal including diverse topics from the fields of philology and communication”. In this sense, the dean says the cycle “is aimed at everyone” and expects it to be “more open to the city, thanks to the collaboration with the Barcelona City Council”.   

A wide program aimed at everyone

After the launch of the cycle on February 6, on February 20, the expert on English literature Ana Moya will reveal the possible re-readings of the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, in the conference “Frankenstein en el cine”. On March 5, Professor José Enrique Gargallo will reflect –from a Romance linguistic perspective- on “La meravellosa història dels nostres mots”. The conferences given in March will end on Thursday, March 19, with the pedagogue and expert on Pyscholinguistics Liliana Tolchinsky, who will give the conference “La escritura  y el desarrollo del lenguaje”.

On April 2, the coordinator of the Research Group Aula Musica Poetica from the Catalan Government, Lola Josa, will present a combination of literature and music in the conference “En busca de Orfeo: la reconstrucción de la música y sus argumentos en la poesía y el teatro de lo siglos XVI y XVII”. Dolors Bramon, expert on Islam, will go over the current state of this reality with the conference “L’Islam, avui” on Thursday, April 30, because “there are many misunderstandings and distorted views on Islam”.

Experts on comparative literature Pere Gifra-Adroher and Jacqueline Hurtley will present the figure of the political activist, novelist, journalist and literature critic Hannah Lynch in the conference of May 14, “Hannah Lycnh i el seu viatge a Espanya”. On May 28 the cycle will look into the challenges of our tendencies regarding audiovisual uses, with the conference “La nova televisió: noves audiències i nous consums audiovisuals”, by the expert on audiovisual communication and new narrative Anna Tarragó.

On June 4, the head of the Section of Spanish, Juan Pablo García-Borrón, will offer an interesting analysis on the cartography of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages in the conference “Un medievalista perspicaz: la toponimia”. Last, on June 11, the linguist and awardee of Saint George’s Cross in 2019, Carme Junyent, will present her thought in the conference “Coses que ens ensenyen les llengües” and will show, how languages show alternative ways to do things: we all explain things, but we do so in different ways; we measure space, but not in the same way; time goes by for everyone, but everyone tells this in different ways too”.