Professor Ilan Stavans analyses Spanglish at the Faculty of Philology of the UB

Professor Ilan Stavans.
Professor Ilan Stavans.
Academic
(20/03/2015)

Ilan Stavans, one of the most outstanding experts on Latino culture in the United States, particularly on Spanglish, visits the University of Barcelona invited by the Consulate General of the United States in Barcelona and the Department of Spanish of the UB. He will describe the main sociological and linguistic features of this language phenomenon on a lecture that takes place on Monday 23 March at 12.30 p.m., in the room 107 at the Faculty of Philology (585, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes).

Professor Ilan Stavans.
Professor Ilan Stavans.
Academic
20/03/2015

Ilan Stavans, one of the most outstanding experts on Latino culture in the United States, particularly on Spanglish, visits the University of Barcelona invited by the Consulate General of the United States in Barcelona and the Department of Spanish of the UB. He will describe the main sociological and linguistic features of this language phenomenon on a lecture that takes place on Monday 23 March at 12.30 p.m., in the room 107 at the Faculty of Philology (585, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes).

Born in Mexico in a Jewish family, Ilan Stavans has been the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at the Amberst College, in Massachusetss, since 1993. Writer, essayist and critic, he has published several books, for example Spanglish (Harper, 2003), Love and Language (Yale, 2007), and Gabriel García Márquez: The Early Years (Palgrave, 2010). In addition, he is publisher at Restless Books and co-founder of the Great Books Summer. About ten years ago, he translated into Spanglish the first part of the emblematic Spanish work The Quixote.

Recently, he has published, together with Juan Villoro, El ojo en la nuca (Anagrama, 2014), and he is going to publish two other works: Reclaiming Travel (Duke) and Quixote: The Novel and The World (Norton).

Spanglish is a language variation that mixes Spanish and English at different degrees and in diverse ways depending on the community that uses it. It is estimated that around 40 million people speak it.