Liverpool University Press and the editors of the Catalan Review are delighted to mark the 40th anniversary of the journal. Published on behalf of the North American Catalan Society (NACS), the journal publishes research articles and book reviews on all aspects of Catalan culture. In the following post, Editor William Viestenz (University of Minnesota) reflects on the journal’s history and introduces a selection of articles from the journal’s archive which are available free to read for a limited time.
Founded in 1986, eight years after the North American Catalan Society was established, the journal has long championed a broad range of theoretical and critical approaches, which readers will find reflected in the dozen articles in this special anniversary selection.
In the foreword to the first issue published in June 1986, editors Manuel Duran, Josep Roca-Pons, and Nathaniel Smith set parameters for the journal’s mission that well exceeded a simple dissemination of Catalan culture to specialized academics in North America: from the outset, the journal’s task was to complete “the missing piece of the puzzle in Western culture”.
As the journal prepares to publish its 40th volume in July 2026, the Catalan Review’s intellectual horizons are a source of considerable excitement for the editors. The journal’s collaboration with Liverpool University Press, now in its thirteenth year, has been integral to wider dissemination and visibility of the published work, most recently through the Subscribe-to-Open initiative, LUP Open Languages, whose success has enabled the open access publication of the journal’s 2026 content. In 2023, the North American Catalan Society launched a new biennial prize for the best article published in the journal, which signals an important step in the support of scholarly researchers in the field of Catalan studies. The intellectual range and innovation shown in the multiple special clusters published in recent years speak to the journal’s stature as the premier venue for cutting-edge scholarship in Catalan studies on an international scale. Finally, the journal’s editorial board will be revamped beginning with the 40th volume, reflecting new generations of scholars who will be at the vanguard of the discipline for decades to come.
The articles in this anniversary selection demonstrate the evolution of the field of Catalan studies over the past four decades and, moreover, are proof that the Catalan Review historically has been the venue for the most critical and groundbreaking innovations in the field. It is not simply the missing gaps in the puzzle of ‘Western’ culture that the Catalan Review endeavours to fill—these contributions emphasize that the burning debates in Catalan studies speak to questions of a global nature.
William Viestenz, Editor of the Catalan Review.
Free‑to‑read articles from the journal’s archive
Minority language Families in diaspora: language transmission among Catalans and Galicians in New York City
Eva J. Daussà, Volume 35. 1, 2021
The Religious Poetry of Bernat Fenollar, Joan Escrivà, and Roís de Corella in Its Literary Context
Marinela Garcia Sempere, Volume 11. 1, 1997
Literatures in Search of Statehood
Edgar Illas, Volume 34, 2020
Defending the Language of the Peasants in Fifteenth-Century Valencia: Jaume Gassull’s La Brama dels Llauradors
Vicente Lledó-Guillem, Volume 34, 2020
L’impacte de Violant de Bar en la cultura humanística de Catalunya: Una revolució a la francesa?
Montserrat Piera, Volume 22. 1, 2008
Aproximació a la narrativa experimental postfranquista
Margalida Pons, Volume 19. 1, 2005
The Link in Consciousness: Time and Community in Rodoreda’s La plaça del diamant
Joan Ramon Resina, Volume 2.2, 1987
National Literatures and Interliterary Communities in Spain and Catalonia
Mario Santana, Volume 14.1-2, 2000
The Moving Mountain: Aporias of Nineteenth-Century Catalan Ideology
Josep-Miquel Sobrer, Volume 14.1-2, 2000
Poetics of the Proto-Archive: Creating the Industrial Workers’ Redemption
Aurélie Vialette, Volume 24, 2010
Significació i llenguatge
Josep M. Vidal i Roca, Volume 4.1-2, 1990
Sense, Landscape, Stimmung: Eco-Epistemology in the Work of Toni Sala and Víctor Català
William Viestenz, Volume 28, 2014
Subscribe to access 40 years of archive content
If you would like to read more from the Catalan Review and access the complete 40‑year archive online, please recommend the journal to your librarian to gain access through your institution.
2026 also marks the centenary of Catalan Studies at the University of Liverpool. Established in 1926 by Edgar Allison Peers, Liverpool is a pioneering centre for Catalan Studies in the United Kingdom. Over the past century, the department has fostered teaching, research and public engagement across a wide range of areas, from literature and history to politics, music and architecture.
Find out more about the centenary celebrations at the University of Liverpool >
Also of interest: An OA modern languages article for every day of the year: LUP Open Languages achieves open access for 2026 thanks to library support
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