The IStReS database: Reflections on the configuration of the field of Iberian Studies

Revista de Humanidades Digitales http://revistas.uned.es/index.php/RHD/index Recibido 10/11/2018 – Aceptado 10/01/2019 Dirección Clara Martínez Cantón Gimena del Rio Riande Ernesto Priani Secretaría Romina De León RHD 3 (2019) ISSN 2531-1786 The IStReS Database: Reflections on the Configuration of the Field of Iberian Studies The IStReS database: Reflections on the configuration of the field of Iberian Studies Santiago PÉREZ ISASI Centro de Estudos Comparatistas, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9548-4655 [email protected] Esther GIMENO UGALDE Universitat Wien http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9098-9654 [email protected] ABSTRACT Firstly, this paper discusses the objectives and methodologies of the IStReS (Iberian Studies Reference Site) project. IStReS (http://istres.letras.ulisboa.pt) is an online platform that provides tools for researchers in the field of Iberian Studies, which include a searchable bibliographic database, a Who’s who of relevant scholars in the field, and frequent news updates about happenings in the discipline. Secondly, the paper presents an analysis of the 1,786 references that are currently included in the database in order to obtain a more detailed image of the status of Iberian Studies today. The results will allow to draw some conclusions on the current configuration of the field. RESUMEN Este artículo presenta, en primer lugar, los objetivos y la metodología del proyecto IStReS (Iberian Studies Reference Site). IStReS (http://istres.letras.ulisboa.pt) es una plataforma online que ofrece herramientas para los investigadores del campo de los Estudios Ibéricos: una base de datos de bibliografía secundaria, un Who’s who de académicos relevantes para esta área, y una sección de noticias sobre eventos relacionados con la disciplina. En segundo lugar, se realiza un análisis de las 1.786 referencias actualmente incluidas en la base de datos para obtener una imagen más detallada de la situación actual de los Estudios Ibéricos. Los resultados de este análisis nos permitirán extraer algunas conclusiones sobre la configuración de este campo científico. KEYWORDS Database, Iberian Studies, Iberian Studies Reference Site, Academic Field, Hispanism. PALABRAS CLAVE Base de datos, estudios ibéricos, Iberian Studies Reference Site, disciplina académica, hispanismo. 47 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 1. IBERIAN STUDIES AND ISTRES Although the study of the Iberian Peninsula has a much longer history, Iberian Studies’ epistemological, academic and institutional consolidation as a field is a relatively recent occurrence. Its development into a recognized scientific discipline is best understood in the context of the revision and renewal of Area Studies (the multidisciplinary study of geocultural or geopolitical areas, such as South-Asian Studies, Eastern European Studies, etc.) and other supranational disciplines within Comparative Literature (such as European Literature or World Literature). It can also be seen in light of the spatial turn in the Humanities during the last years of the 20th century and the well-documented academic and epistemological crisis of Hispanism in the United States −in particular, that of so-called Peninsular Hispanism or Peninsular Studies (Moraña, 2005; Epps & Cifuentes, 2005; Santana, 2008; Cornejo Parriego & Villamandos, 2011). Based on a reconceptualization of Peninsular literatures and cultures, Iberian Studies is a new interdisciplinary field whose impetus comes, in Resina’s words, from its intrinsic relationality and its reorganization of monolingual fields based on nation-states and their postcolonial extensions into a peninsular plurality of cultures and languages pre-existing and coexisting with the official cultures of the state (2013, p. vii). Current discourse in Iberian Studies –understood here as “the methodological consideration of the Iberian Peninsula as a complex, multilingual cultural and literary system” (Pérez Isasi, 2013, p. 1)– engages with several different geographical regions, academic traditions and disciplinary approaches. Over the last two decades, the field has established itself as an emerging discipline with a diverse and extensive academic corpus that encompasses a variety of objects and methodologies, which tend to emphasize its comparative or relational nature as one of its main specific traits (Gimeno Ugalde, 2017; Pérez Isasi, 2017). As Resina has noted (2009, p. 92), promoting Iberian Studies as an alternative to Hispanism is charged with political implications, because Iberian Studies are founded on the deconstruction of the historical and epistemological links between national language, culture and history that have shaped academia since the mid-19th century (or even earlier). To some extent, Iberian Studies is an anti-(neo)imperialist reaction to the field of Hispanism, a field that many current scholars consider centralist and conservative in both its politics and its epistemology. Authors such as Joseba Gabilondo (2013-2014) take a step further, arguing that even this alternative paradigm, if it is not developed in an explicitly comparative and non-hierarchical fashion, may end up reestablishing and reasserting the same underlying power relations as previous national and colonial discourses, doing little more than re-appropriating a few token objects from peripheral cultures. In our view, however, this criticism appears to be based on an analysis of Iberian Studies in North America, since the field’s development in Europe –and 48 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 particularly on the Iberian Peninsula– is more closely tied to Comparative Literature and Literary Theory than to a reconfigured Hispanism. The IStReS project, a collaboration between researchers on both sides of the Atlantic, was born out of the realization that Iberian Studies found itself in a paradoxical situation: while the field had grown in scope and complexity in both the USA and Europe and begun to develop a solid theoretical and critical corpus (as evidenced by recent publications such as Resina, 2009; Resina, 2013, Pérez Isasi, 2013 and Muñoz-Basols et al., 2017), there was still a need for greater cohesion and dialogue among the different traditions and agents within it. The gulf between North American and European Iberian Studies was particularly striking, there were key differences in their origins, methodologies and objects of study, which lead to diverse and even conflicting definitions of the field itself (Pérez Isasi, 2019). Aware of this paradox, the main researchers conceived the IStReS project as a way to offer specific tools for enhancing the discipline’s coherence and strengthening internal dialogue between Iberian Studies scholars. To this end, the project comprises: a) a bibliographic database that compiles and systematizes the academic production about the Iberian Peninsula from the last two decades, which have coincided with the establishment of Iberian Studies as an (inter)disciplinary and institutional field; b) a Who’s who section that includes bio-bibliographical profiles of the most relevant scholars who work in the field of Iberian Studies; c) a News section that offers information on recent publications, conferences, exhibitions and other activities related to the discipline, as well as news about the IStReS project itself. The following section will briefly describe the methodology used to develop the IStReS platform, focusing on the design and implementation of the database. 2. ISTRES METHODOLOGY, DESIGN AND VISUALIZATION As mentioned above, the core of the IStReS project is a bibliographic database that includes and organizes the relevant publications in Iberian Studies since 2000. During the early stages of the project, 2000 was established as a chronological starting point for the database, not only because of the year’s symbolic value, but also because, in both the USA and Europe, Iberian Studies has consolidated into a field with its own identity over the past two decades. In 49 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 later phases of the project, the database’s chronological scope will be broadened to include sources published between 1974 1 and 1999. At this stage, the database is limited to sources concerned with Iberian cultures − that is, with the broad group of practices, objects and institutions that find expression in the literature, music, folklore, theatre, film, television, and so on, of the different territories that make up the Iberian Peninsula. For the time being, the database does not include sources from fields such as Linguistics, Sociology or Political Science, although we have recently begun to incorporate works related to the history of Iberian cultural and political relations (and to Iberianism in particular) 2 . To be included in the database, publications must also be based in a comparative or relational approach to the study of the Peninsula. In other words, they must involve the study of at least two or more Iberian geocultural spaces (Spain and Portugal, Catalonia and Spain, Galicia and the Basque Country, etc.) or of the Iberian cultural space as a whole. This requirement stems from both scientific considerations –according to our understanding of the field (Resina, 2009, 2013; Delgado, 2013; Olaziregi, 2015; Pérez, 2016), the specificity of Iberian Studies stems from its comparative or relational nature– and practical utility: it clearly defines a subset of academic production that is distinct from (albeit related to) the fields of Basque, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish Studies 3 . Publications have been drawn from several different sources to create a database that is as comprehensive and inclusive as possible. First of all, we compiled the most relevant collective publications from the last two decades, such as Reading Iberia (Buffery et al., 2007), A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula (Cabo Aseguinolaza et al., 2010; Domínguez et al., 2016), Iberian Modalities (Resina, 2013), Looking at Iberia (Pérez Isasi, 2013) and the Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies (Muñoz Basols et al., 2017). Secondly, we gathered publications by members of our scientific committee and scholars in the project’s Who’s who section, as well as publications that those members and scholars suggested. In parallel to these two strategies, we also conducted specialized searches to find bibliographic references related to areas of special interest, such as the intersection of Translation Studies and Iberian Studies or the relations between Galicia and Portugal. Once the database’s general inclusion criteria had been established, the design phase began. However, instead of designing an ad hoc database –which would have been more costly 1 The year 1974 is a symbolic one, as it represents the transition from dictatorship to democracy in Portugal and Spain. 2 This expansion in the database scope is, in turn, mirrored in the composition of the Who is who, which now also includes scholars who specialize in Iberianism or Iberian nationalisms from a historical perspective, such as Sérgio Campos Matos, Xosé Manuel Núñez-Seixas or José Miguel Sardica. 3 The exclusion of publications that deal with only one linguistic, cultural or national area is obviously not due to any judgement on their scientific value. Their inclusion in the database would, however, dilute the specificity and scope of the IStReS project (and of Iberian Studies in opposition with other academic fields), while it would make it immeasurable in terms of size. 50 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 and time-consuming given the variety of data that would need to be included– we decided to use the open-source reference management software Zotero as a platform. Zotero offers a set of features that make it ideal for a project like IStReS –it enables users to label data by type (books, book chapters, journal articles, dissertations, etc.), work both online and offline and retrieve information in a variety of bibliographic formats– and it is used as the platform for other databases such as the Linguistic Bibliography of Spanish in the United States 4 . Zotero also offers a feature that has proven extremely useful for the IStReS project: the ability to attribute tags to bibliographic entries. This feature simultaneously broadens the search options available to users and facilitates the extraction and analysis of quantitative data from the database. A set of tags were established and assigned to each database entry to allow for sorting by chronological period, object of analysis (e.g. literature, cinema, theatre, arts), geocultural space (e.g. Spain, Portugal, Catalonia, Galicia), scientific field (e.g. Comparative Literature, Translation Studies) or any other relevant information related to the content of the publication: names of authors, titles of works, themes, keywords, and so on. This database is delivered to users through a Wordpress-based website 5 . This website is linked to the database using a specific Zotero API, which has been updated and modified to suit the project’s needs. Figure 1. Search interface in the IStReS website. As figure 1 illustrates, the search interface enables users to search the database by text title and/or author and filter by type of entry. It also allows users to choose how the search results will be formatted: as a table, or in any of the three most widely used bibliographic styles (APA, MLA or Chicago). If users select the table format, they will see a general overview of the main bibliographic criteria (author, title, year, type of publication) and a +info column (see figure 2) that can be expanded to reveal complete bibliographic information about any given entry. 4 LiBSUS, see: http://observatoriocervantes.org/bsus/bsus.php. 5 See: http://istres.letras.ulisboa.pt. 51 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 Figure 2. Basic search in table format. In the bottom half of the search interface, there is a box that allows users to search the database by tag. This search feature works slightly differently than the one described above: as soon as the user starts typing a given area of interest into the search box, the interface automatically supplies the group of tags that match the chain of entered characters. For instance, if the user types Basque into the tag search box, they will see a list of (clickable) tags that include the word Basque, as shown in figure 3. Figure 3. Tag search results for Basque. As already mentioned, the database and its search functions constitute the core of the IStReS project. These tools are likely to be the most immediately useful to researchers in the field of Iberian Studies, but the website includes two additional resources for interested users. The first is a Who’s who section 6 that offers information about several of the most relevant scholars in the field, from different academic traditions, with a wide range of specialization and geo-cultural focuses of interest. Each of these profiles includes a recent image of the scholar, a list of their areas of interest, a bio-/bibliographical profile that highlights the scholar’s contributions to the field, links to their institutional or personal websites and a list of their publications in the IStReS database (see figure 4). 6 See: http://istres.letras.ulisboa.pt/whos-who/. 52 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 Figure 4. Example of a profile in the IStReS Who’s who section. The third and last feature of the website is a News section 7 (see figure 5), which is regularly updated with information about publications, conferences and exhibitions related to Iberian Studies and news about the IStReS project itself. Users also have the option of receiving these updates via email through the Subscribe box (which appears in the web page’s right-hand column). Figure 5. IStReS News section. 7 See: http://istres.letras.ulisboa.pt/#news. 53 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 In addition to this News section, the website also offers some relevant information about the database (its design, user instructions and the Creative Commons license for use) and the project (its objectives, methodology, scientific committee, team, etc.), as well as about our dissemination activities and findings. Additionally, there is a Contact section through which users can send suggestions or corrections for the database or get in touch with the web designers or project leaders about any other issue related to the site or project. 3. THE ISTRES DATABASE. AN ANALYSIS OF ITS COMPOSITION In this second part of the article, we will present and analyze a set of quantitative data extracted from the IStReS database 8 . The aim of this section is twofold: it intends, on the one hand, to obtain a more detailed image of the current state of the project, and identify possible biases, limitations and omissions; and, on the other hand, to determine whether the composition of the database reflects the configuration of the field of Iberian Studies itself. The quantitative analysis was carried out by using Zotero tags to conduct specific searches in the database. We established six parameters for the analysis of the IStReS bibliographic corpus: geocultural space, compared geocultural spaces (two-by-two), historical period analysed in the publication, scientific area and the main language in which the publication was written 9 . A dominant trend can be observed among the geocultural areas studied in the publications (see figure 6): more than half of the references currently included in the database deal with the Spanish/Castilian geocultural space, followed by the Portuguese, Catalan and Galician geocultural spaces 10 . The Basque space is clearly underrepresented in the database, with only 112 entries. The tag Iberia, which is used to identify references that either deal with pan-Iberian phenomena or do not specify which Iberian geocultural area they analyze, appears in 303 entries. 8 When we finished this article (January 2019), the analysis was based on the 1.786 references currently catalogued in the IStReS database. 9 For statistical purposes, when more than one language is used in a specific document (particularly in the case of collective edited volumes), only the principal language is counted. 10 In assessing these statistics, it should be taken into account that, according to our corpus criteria and research methodology, each item in the database can have more than one tag. For instance, a single entry on bilingual Portuguese theater of the Golden Age is labeled with at least these tags: Spain, Portugal, Literature, Theater, Theater Studies, Bilingualism, 16th century, 17th century, Spanish language and Portuguese language. This also explains why the sum of the entries in the statistical analysis (Figs. 6-9) is higher than the total number of references in the database. 54 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 Figure 6. Number of entries by geocultural area. When the database is sorted by compared geocultural spaces (two-by-two), a very similar hierarchy emerges (see figure 7). Figure 7. Number of entries by compared geocultural spaces. In this case, sources that compare the Spanish and Portuguese geocultural spaces (572 entries in the database) clearly dominate the corpus, and there is a large gap between these sources and the second most common set, i.e. those that compare the Spanish and Catalan cultural spaces (238 entries). As regards the Galician space, it is worth mentioning that there are 61 Pérez Isasi, S. & Gimeno Ugalde, E. Revista de Humanidades Digitales 3, 2019, 46-63 Cabo Aseguinolaza, D., Abuín González, A. & Domínguez, C. (Eds.) (2010). 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