Spanish and Portuguese Hosts Eulàlia Miralles Jori in partnership with the Institut Ramon Llull

March 11, 2025

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese welcomes Eulàlia Miralles as part of our on going collaboration with the Institut Ramon Llull. Prof. Miralles specializes on literary culture from the 15th to 19th centuries, especially non-fiction works like historiography, chronicles, diaries, and memoirs, with an emphasis on the Baroque period. Her reserach interests expand from textual criticism (Catalan, Spanish, and Latin) to cultural history, political literature, Catalan identity, and gender studies, focusing in particular on secular women. Her most recent publications include the anthology Versos per vèncer. Poesia de la guerra dels Segadors (2 vol., Barcelona, Barcino). She is currently a professor at the Universitat de València and Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. 

While visiting UC Berkeley, Prof. Eulàlia Miralles Jori will gave two talks in our department, both on Tuesday, March 18th: 

  • “La mujer escribe. Espacios y géneros para la escritura femenina en la Edad Moderna” 

11 am - 12:30 pm 

Dwinelle 219 - Survey of Spanish Literature 

(Hosted by Prof. Nasser Meerkhan)

This talk was given in Spanish

  La mujer escribe. Espacios y géneros para la escritura femenina en la edad moderna

  • “Llengua i política: un binomi històric? Les llengües dels territoris de parla catalana”

1 pm - 2 pm

Dwinelle 5125 Library of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese - Catalan 102

(Hosted by Lect. Ana B. Redondo-Campillos)

This talk was held in Catalan

Language and Politics in Catalan Territories

On Tuesday, March 18, Professor Eulàlia Miralles Jori visited the Department of Spanish and Portuguese from the Universitat de València to give a talk entitled “La mujer escribe. Espacios y géneros para la escritura femenina en la Edad Moderna.” With sponsorship from Institut Ramon Llull, Professor Miralles delivered the talk to Professor Nasser Meerkhan’s class and members of the Berkeley Spanish and Portuguese community. 

Miralles, who specializes in the Baroque period, began her talk by posing the questions, ¿La mujer, escribe? ¿Qué? ¿Para quién?, and ¿En qué espacio? As Miralles noted, early examples of Peninsular writing by women are far more scarce than those by their male counterparts, and such works emerge from a variety of circumstances that allowed women to write—either in the private sphere of the home, the semi-private cloister, or in a public capacity. 

Miralles structured her talk as a survey of women writers from through 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, attending to how their poems affirm a woman’s right to read, write, and engage in cultural dialogue. Miralles introduced the class to poems in both Spanish and Catalan, presenting poems like Jerònima Galles’s “La impresora al lector” alongside Narcisa Torres / Roda Trincares’s “En elogi dels tres llibrets que Carlos Ros té impresos.” 

Miralles also discussed the problems that putting together a survey of early-modern writing by women presents. The archive contains female authors who failed to sign their works, male authors who posed as women, female authors whose public profile is unknown, and female authors whose work was destroyed. 

Miralles’s work, in creating a canon of peninsular literature written by women, is assiduous, and her talk offered students insight into how she proceeds: by combining works by authors known during their time with recently discovered works, retroactively added to the canon. In all, Miralles demonstrated that the study of early modern literature by women is a fascinating and complicated field, in which the historical circumstances from which literature emerges are as novel as the texts themselves. 

Miralles is currently a professor at the Universitat de València and Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. Most recently, she curated the collection Versos per vèncer. Poesia de la guerra dels Segadors (1640-1652).

Written by Violet Taylor

On Tuesday, March 18, Professor Eulàlia Miralles Jori gave the talk “Llengua i política: un binomi històric? Les llengües dels territoris de parla catalana” [Language and politics: a historical duality? The languages of catalan-speaking territories] to students and speakers of Catalan in the Spanish and Portuguese Department. Miralles’ talk, delivered in Catalan, was made possible by the Department’s collaboration with Insitut Ramon Llull. 

Miralles’ talk addressed a prescient topic: the Catalan language as a political topic in the Catalan-speaking world, which extends beyond Catalonia into other regions of Spain and the neighboring countries of France, Andorra, and Italy. Unlike what contemporary politics might lead one to believe, to imagine group identities based on shared language is a relatively recent idea, emerging in the Romantic period. 

As Miralles noted, the legal status of Catalan as a co-official language in Catalan-speaking regions is as recent in Spain as democracy—both established by the 1978 constitution. Regarded as a national patrimony deserving of protection, Catalan’s official status has resulted in a complicated politics of stewardship. Of particular contention is the question of Catalan’s role
in public education. Providing examples from catalan news outlets, Miralles suggested that this debate coalesces around a notion of linguistic rights: the right to learn in Catalan, a cultural patrimony, and the right to learn in Spanish, the national language of the state. 

As an example of this debate, Miralles pointed to the Autonomous Community of Valencia’s vote this Spring to establish Valencian, a variant of Catalan, as the base-language in the region’s school system. Citing the work of writers Josep Maria Terricabras, Theodor Kallifatides, Matthew Tree, and the comedian Marc Giró, Miralles noted how the national conversation regarding Catalan has unfolded in the literary sphere as well as in popular culture. In all, Miralles’ suggested that if the association between language and politics is a relatively recent idea, it is nevertheless central to understanding the Catalan-speaking world. 

Miralles is currently a professor at the Universitat de València and Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. Most recently, she curated the collection Versos per vèncer. Poesia de la guerra dels Segadors (1640-1652).

Written by Violet Taylor

Eulàlia Miralles Jori (Barcelona, 1971) studied Catalan Philology at the Universitat de Barcelona (1994) and earned her PhD there in 2001. She has held research and teaching positions at various institutions, including the Universitat de Girona, Universidad de Córdoba, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and Universitat de València, where she is currently an associate professor of Catalan Philology. She has also taught at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and as a visiting professor at universities in Nottingham, Roma-Tre, Venice, and Sassari.

She is a member of the Institut Interuniversitari de Filologia Valenciana (Universitat de València / Universitat d'Alacant / Universitat Jaume I),  and the Center for Catalan Studies (UC Santa Barbara), and she is currently directing the Aula Carles Riba (Universitat de Barcelona / Institut d'Estudis Catalans).