The Mercè Rodoreda Chair at The City University of New York has scheduled a seminar on neo-Victorian literature from 17 to 21 March, led by Argentine-born writer and journalist Lucía Lijtmaer.

The aim of this seminar is to reflect on how the turn of the century has brought about new anxieties for increasingly diverse subjects, expressed through fantastic, gothic, and phantasmagorical narratives. Lijtmaer will analyse how, through gothic fiction, science fiction, or contemporary fantasy, Latin American and Catalan female authors describe and reinterpret this temporal moment. The seminar, therefore, proposes to approach the contemporary context with works by Mónica Ojeda, Gabriela Wiener, Mariana Enríquez, Irene Solà, Laura Fernàndez, Eva Baltasar, Roser Cabré-Verdiell, and Núria Bendicho.

In addition to the seminar, on Friday 21 March, Lucía Lijtmaer is scheduled to participate in a public debate with Sandra Pareja, literary agent at Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents (NY), with the aim of building bridges between Latin American, Catalan, and European female authors and discussing how the public, the publishing sector, and the market receive these new authors.

Meanwhile, on 24 March, the course "Political Literature in the Baroque Period: Spaces, Genres, and Languages of Propaganda in the Iberian World" will commence at the University of Chicago. Scheduled as part of the Joan Coromines Chair in Catalan Studies, this course, taught by University of Valencia professor Eulàlia Miralles i Jori, will focus on political and propaganda literature of the Baroque period. The course aims to define the genre (ballads, sermons, etc.), identify its characteristic compositions and texts, analyse them in their context, and understand their importance in transmitting ideologically oriented messages in all the vernacular languages of the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin.

In addition to the course, and in collaboration with other universities, Dr Miralles will give four lectures on different aspects of Catalan language and culture between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period:

• 18 March: University of California (Berkeley): "La mujer escribe. Espacios y géneros para la escritura femenina en la Edad Moderna" (course by Prof. Nasser Meerkhan)
• 18 March: University of California (Berkeley): "Llengua i política: un binomi històric? Les llengües dels territoris de parla catalana" (course by Prof. Ana Belén Redondo)
• 11 April: University of Colorado (Boulder): research seminar, "El carnaval en la ciudad barroca mediterránea. Barcelona y sus fiestas" (course by Prof. Núria Silleras-Fernández)
• 24 April: Stony Brook University (New York): research seminar, "Dying like a king. Funerary practices in Early Modern Ages" (course by Prof. Quim Solias)