Barcelona Reader

Enric Bou has been chair of the Hispanic Studies Department at Brown University (Providence), between 2002 and 2011, and president of the North- American Catalan Society between 2007 and 2010. Currently he is professor in the Department of Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Studies at Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice. His latest book is Invention of Space. City, Travel and Literature (Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2013), published also in Catalan: La invenció de l’espai. Ciutat i viatge (Publicacions Universitat de València, 2013). Jaume Subirana is Associate Professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, and he has been visiting professor at Duke University, University of British Columbia, Brown University and Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice. He edited Willkommen in Katalonien. Eine literarische Entdeckungsreise (dtv, 2007), and has published Barcelona acròstic, Barcelona 365. Temps i ciutat and recently, BarcelonABC. Alfabet d’una ciutat/A City Alphabet (2013).

'A cultural feast for both visitors and residents, the city is captured with depth and precision in The Barcelona Reader [...] Overall, the reader provides an in-depth study of Barcelona, from its crimes and graveyards, to its grand streets, to the questions of authenticity and tourism, to the showcase of the 1992 Olympic games. This is a reader that achieves its raison d’être, covering a broad range of specialities and topics for just about everyone. Ultimately, The Barcelona Reader succeeds in capturing the true essence of the city.' Pádraig Collins, AIGNE

• List of illustrationsNotes on contributorsIntroduction: Barcelona: Cultural readings of a city — Enric Bou and Jaume SubiranaI City, history, and territory1. Barcelona: The siege city — Robert Davidson2. Barcelona as an adaptive ecology — Ferran Sagarra3. A present past, Barcelona street names, from Víctor Balaguer to Pasqual Maragall — Jaume Subirana4. ‘The asylum of modern times’: Barcelona and Europe — Felipe Fernández-Armesto5. A fragile country — Colm TóibínII City and society6. Barcelona and modernity — Brad Epps7. Football and identities in Catalonia — Alejandro Quiroga8. The family and the city: Power and the creation of cultural imagery — Gary Wray McDonogh9. Memory and the city in Barcelona’s cemeteries — Elisa Martí-LópezIII Art, architecture, and the city10. Picasso among his fellows at 4 Gats: Beyond Modernisme? — Jordi Falgàs11. Gaudí: Poet of stone, artistic hedgehog — Marià Marín i Torné12. El Poble Espanyol / El Pueblo Español (1929) — Jordana MendelsonIV The Olympics and the city13. Barcelona: Urban identity 1992–2002 — Donald McNeill14. From the Olympic torch to the Universal Forum of Cultures: The after-image of Barcelona’s modernity — Joan Ramon ResinaV Literature, cinema, and the city15. La Gran Encisera: Three odes to Barcelona, and a film — Josep Miquel Sobrer16. The deceptive dame: Criminal revelations of the Catalan capital — Stewart King17. A Biutiful city: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s filmic critique of the ‘Barcelona Model’ — Benjamin Fraser