Guillem Molla

Guillem Molla is senior lecturer of Spanish Studies and the Catalan language program director at UMass, Amherst. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in both Spanish and Catalan Studies from the University of Girona, and a PhD Extraordinary Award upon completion of his thesis on comparatist Ramon Esquerra. Prior to coming to UMass, he worked as a Tutorial Fellow at Cardiff University and a Foreign Language Assistant at the University of Bristol. He received a Batista i Roca Award from IPECC for his promotion of Catalan culture in the US. He has served as a graduate advisor in Digital Humanities at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). He is the co-curator of the Massachusetts Catalan Film Festival and the UMass Catalan Week (since 2014).

His main area of research deals with modern Iberian and Catalan literature. He has published works on food anthropology, documentary film, reception studies, and comparative literature. His major research project was published in a book titled Ramon Esquerra: Geografia crítica d’un esperit comparatista, which addresses the introduction of academic comparatism in Catalonia during the interwar period and the adequacy of this discipline in the Iberian context. He is the editor of the correspondence between writer Josep Pla and historian Jaume Vicens Vives, and several works by Catalan authors, especially major fin-de-siècle writer Prudenci Bertrana.