Offering the first in a series of New York University symposia on cities in global perspective, NYUs Catalan Center, Glucksman Ireland House, and the Department of History have joined together to observe the phenomena that have transformed the respective capital cities of Catalonia and Ireland over the past 40 years. Considered miracles of the European Union and the global economy, both countries have gone from poverty to prosperity. Both cities have achieved desirability, as tourist and worker destinations. What are the effects upon the cities of this transformative change? Have the local cultures been affected? How do formerly homogeneous cultures respond to a new global, multiethnic, and multiracial population? Does sport contribute to racial polarization or allow a channel for integration?
On Friday and Saturday, February 6-7, Friday, 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m., and Saturday, 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m, academics, practitioners, social scientists, graduate, and undergraduate students and observers will come together in an attempt to look cross-culturally at a global phenomenon of success that is now reacting in real time to the global recession. This special event takes place at NYUs King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, 53 Washington Square North. For more information, call 212.998.8255.
Participants will include specialists from Ireland, such as Philip OConnell, of the Economic and Social Research Institute, and Liam OCallaghan, of Leeds Metropolitan; from Barcelona, Ricard Zapata-Barrero of the Research Group on Immigration and Political Innovation and Antoni Luna, of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Dr. Zoua Van on Cambodian immigration to Ireland; from New School University, Elga Castro; and from NYU, Awam Amkpa, Neil Brennan, David Ludden, and John Waters.
Texts and documents featured include a film by NYU undergraduate Ying Ying on Chinese immigration to Ireland; a photo essay on Nigerian immigration by Awam Amkpa; and testimony from the prize-winning Catalan novelist, Najat El-Hachmi.