How Ibero-American literature shaped cultural modernity

The official narrative identifies Europe as the birthplace of Modernity, the philosophical and artistic movement that emerged in response to the transformations of Western society in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century, and establishes English, French and German as the languages that dominated the cultural discourse of the period. In recent times, several studies have challenged and rewritten this narrative, which originated in English-speaking academia, and highlighted the avant-garde of other regions and cultures, often considered peripheral, as equally central to the emergence of modernity.

The project Social Networks of the Past. Mapping Hispanic and Lusophone Literary Modernity, 1898-1959, led by Diana Roig-Sanz, an ICREA researcher at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), has contributed to the decentralization of cultural history in the first half of the 20th century and highlighted the key role of Ibero-America in the construction of modernity. "The UK, France, Germany and the US were the cultural settings that shaped the international order in the first half of the 20th century, which in turn determined their hegemony in the production of scientific knowledge, while the narratives that emerged from southern Europe and Latin America were relegated to the periphery. Over the past 20 years, we've witnessed a shift in direction, with the emergence of global history and connected history, which seeks precisely to rewrite it from a less Eurocentric and more inclusive viewpoint," explained Roig-Sanz, an expert in global perspectives in literary studies, sociology of translation and digital humanities, and a member of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

Recovering the lost history of Ibero-American cultural actors

The Social Networks of the Past project, funded by a highly prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant, worth €1.5 million, has focused on recovering the lost history of Ibero-American mediators in modernist intercultural and multilingual networks and on highlighting the significance of their key role between 1898 and 1959. It has also helped increase the amount of data available to boost the visibility of Ibero-American cultural heritage. And it has designed an innovative methodological model applicable to the study of cross-border cultural phenomena that remain underexamined in other territories, periods, languages and disciplines.

The research has lasted almost six years and has examined four key cultural transformation processes that characterize modern societies in the Ibero-American setting: the institutionalization of Ibero-American cultures in the international context; literature translated in cutting-edge Ibero-American journals; the role of women (writers, publishers, translators and creators of film clubs) in the cultural field; and the role of film critics in the new forms of mass media.

The project has given rise to numerous scientific articles and books that address key topics such as: translation and its key role in the construction of modernity, progressively establishing itself as a professional activity; the role of translated literature in Ibero-American cultural journals as a catalyst for literary modernity and the importation of ideas, authors and texts; and the active participation of women in the cultural sphere, especially in Latin America's first film clubs, contrary to the claims made by previous studies, thus introducing a feminist research perspective, which has resulted in a groundbreaking publication of datasets on women and film culture.

Translation and cinema: key factors in the construction of Modernity

"For many years, the professional status of translators was unregulated, and their rights, working conditions and symbolic capital were undefined. In fact, translators remain somewhat invisible today and, in many places, there's no systematic policy for including, for example, their names in the works they translate. The fact that many translations have historically been carried out by women has contributed to their omission from literary history," explained Roig-Sanz, who coordinates the Global Literary Studies Research Lab (GlobaLS), part of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Social and Cultural Transformations (UOC-TRÀNSIC).

Specific examples that demonstrate the key role of Ibero-American culture in the construction of Modernity include: Luis López Ballesteros' translation into Spanish of the complete works of Freud as early as 1922, making it the first language into which they were translated, with English versions not appearing until 1955; the translation of James Joyce's works in various publications in Spain, Catalonia, Galicia and Argentina during the 1920s, which have not been addressed by academic studies and research; the founding of the PEN Català in 1922, as the second delegation of this international organization of writers, ahead even of the French PEN, created in 1924 (PEN International was founded in London in 1921); and the creation of the first amateur film club, in Horta, Barcelona, in 1923, preceding the Bloomsbury club in London, which was founded in 1925, and long before most European film clubs were created, after 1945. "I wanted to conduct a large-scale, systematic research project that would allow me to verify these indications and contribute to the decentralization of cultural history in the first half of the 20th century, with the aim of increasing the visibility of southern Europe and Latin America, which have often been considered peripheral," said Roig-Sanz.

An innovative methodology for decentralized world history

The project has helped bridge the gap between translation studies and film history, based on a global approach that argues for the need to study literature translation in journals and the role of translators as an independent research subject. Another key aspect of the project is the methodology, which combines qualitative and quantitative perspectives based on computational methods, data mining and artificial intelligence to analyse a vast amount of data, and constitutes a new approach to study a decentralized global cultural history, far removed from the biased historical narrative that prioritizes central Europe and the western world over other cultures.

The other UOC researchers who have participated in the research are Elisabet Carbó-Catalán, Ainamar Clariana-Rodagut, Laura Fólica, Ventsi Ikoff, Alessio Cardillo, Rubén Rodríguez and Pablo Suárez-Mansilla. "We believe that one of the project's most important achievements is its truly multidisciplinary approach, which has brought together scholars from the humanities and data science and has fostered a collaboration in which knowledge, questions and perspectives have been shared, resulting in an endeavour with enormous potential."

For ethical and somewhat activist reasons, the research team has consulted archives preserved in Latin America and at the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin, rather than relying solely on archives located in the imperial capitals (London, Paris, Berlin) or in American universities, where many Latin American archives are held. "This has posed a challenge because the material conditions of the archives are precarious in the case of Latin America, and most files are neither digitized nor well organized to support research using digital humanities methodologies," explained Roig-Sanz.

This study aligns with the UOC research mission on Culture for a critical society and promotes UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 5, Gender Equality, and 17, Partnerships for the Goals.

Related articles

Fólica L., D. Roig-Sanz and S. Caristia. Literary Translation in Periodicals (John Benjamins, 2020): https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.155

Roig-Sanz (2022). The Global Minor: A Transnational Space for Decentering Literary and Translation History. Comparative Literature Studies: https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.59.4.0631

Roig-Sanz (2022). Global translation history. Some theoretical and methodological insights. Translation in Society. https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.22010.roi

Carbó-Catalan E, and Roig-Sanz, D. (2022). Culture as Soft Power (De Gruyter): https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/59456

Hagener M., Roig Sanz (2024). Digital Film Historiography: Challenge of/and Interdisciplinarity. Journal of Cultural Analytics: https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.120944

Ainamar Clariana-Rodagut, Alessio Cardillo (2024). Quantifying Women's Marginalization in Ibero-American Film Culture During the First Half of the Twentieth Century: A Network-Science Proposal. Journal of Cultural Analytics:  https:/​/​doi.org/​10.22148/​001c.118589

Pablo Suárez-Mansilla, Ventsislav Ikoff (2024). Intercultural Transfers in Cinema Dynamics: A Global and Digital Approach to Early Writings on Cinema through the Uruguayan Periodicals Archive: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38789-0_20

Rodríguez-Casañ, R., Carbó-Catalan, E., Solé-Ribalta, A., D. Roig-Sanz, J. Borge, and A. Cardillo (2024). Analysing inter-state communication dynamics and roles in the networks of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03829-1

Roig-Sanz D., Campanella L., Carbó-Catalán E (2025). Translation as a soft power resource: exploring the possibilities, scope, and challenges of an interdisciplinary approach. Perspectives: https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2025.2447143

Open databases

Fólica L., Ikoff, Ventsislav I., Roig-Sanz D., 2018. Translations and Reviews in Iberoamerican Modernist Periodicals (dataset). https://hdl.handle.net/10609/86485

Clariana Rodagut, Ainamar; Cardillo, Alessio; Ikoff, Ventsislav; del Solar-Escardó, Jimena; Roig-Sanz, Diana, 2023, "Social networks in Ibero-American film culture during the first half of the twentieth century: Lola Álvarez Bravo, Victoria Ocampo, María Luz Morales, and the relations between Ibero-American film clubs", https://doi.org/10.34810/data977, CORA.Repositori de Dades de Recerca.

Rodríguez-Casañ, Rubén; Carbó-Catalan, Elisabet; del Solar-Escardó, Jimena; Cardillo, Alessio; Ikoff, Ventislav; Roig-Sanz, Diana, 2024, "People, Places, and Languages in the correspondence preserved in the archive of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation", https://doi.org/10.34810/data985, CORA.Repositori de Dades de Recerca.

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