In spite of the rapid development of the discipline of Iberian Studies over the last few years, there has not yet been an effort to systematize and compile a bibliography like the one proposed here. Numerous publications of recent decades have not yet been academically and scientifically connected, which poses an obstacle to creating a coherent vision of the whole field and its immediate development. This project aims to fill a void in the field of Iberian Studies.

This new mapping will prove highly useful to the meta-study of the field, as it will allow scholars to identify the most studied historical periods, the polycentric relationships that have aroused the most academic interest so far, the most frequently used and studied languages in the field, and the academic centers that promote the discipline of Iberian Studies. Analyzing this information will, in turn, assist the academic community in reconsidering the field, defining its theoretical and methodological corpus going forward, and determining which areas, spaces, and periods require greater academic attention.

The interdisciplinary combination of Iberian Studies and Digital Humanities is one of the innovative aspects of this project, and it will hopefully prove to be very fruitful in the future.

The specific objectives of the IStReS are:

• To establish a group of operative guidelines for the definition of Iberian Studies that reflects the field’s coherence around a set of common concepts and questions as well as its geographical, theoretical, and methodological diversity.
• To collect and systematize, to the most exhaustive extent possible, a bibliography of academic production in Iberian Studies over the last two decades.
• To use available IT tools to develop an appropriate methodology for cataloging the available bibliographic references and making them more accessible to users.
• To consolidate the field of Iberian Studies and make it more visible through the creation of a website which will also host a directory of researchers who are relevant to the field.
• To promote exchange and collaboration between researchers, research centers and groups, and project teams that are actively working in the field of Iberian Studies on both sides of the Atlantic.

IStReS’s core contribution is a database that compiles and systematizes the academic production in the emerging field of Iberian Studies. In this phase of the project, we have established the year 2000 as a chronological starting point, not only because of its symbolic value, but also because it is during these last two decades that Iberian Studies has been consolidated into a field with its own identity, as much in the United States and Canada as in Europe. In later phases of the project an attempt will be made to widen this chronological range in order to include publications from the preceding decades; that is, between 1974 and 1999.

In a similar fashion, during this first stage we are limiting the range of bibliographic references that will be included in the database to those that deal with Iberian cultures —a broad group of practices, objects, and artifacts that find expression in the literature, music, folklore, theatre, film, television, etc. of the different territories that make up the Iberian Peninsula— while excluding other scientific areas like Linguistics, Sociology or Political Science, to name a few. In future stages of the project it would be possible to broaden the database to encompass these areas.

Our database, openly accessible to all userss of the academic community and built on Zotero, aims to constitute a reference tool for researchers and contribute to the consolidation and visibility of Iberian Studies on an international level. Some statistical information about the content of the database can be found here.

Why Zotero?

After considering the possibility of designing an ad hoc database (as in other projects like Orion – CEC), we decided to opt for using Zotero (as in LIBSUS), a powerful and flexible bibliographical management tool that offers advantages both in the introduction of information and in its recovery. The reasoning for utilizing Zotero is as follows:

• It allows simultaneous online and offline work from different locations;
• It is very comprehensive and flexible in its structure;
• It offers a clear and useful tag system;
• It allows to choose among different formats in the search results;
• Updates in the database are immediately visible.

By integrating Zotero into the IStReS website, we allow users to search the database in its most current state, through several search  fields (author, title, tag, language…) and to view and download the results in different formats (table, APA or MLA bibliography)

The full Zotero library can be accessed here.

Alejandro Bía (Universidad Miguel Hernández)

Enric Bou (Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia)

César Domínguez (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela)

Brad Epps (University of Cambridge)

Ângela Fernandes (Centro de Estudos Comparatistas, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa)

Jon Kortazar (Universidad del País Vasco – Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)

Robert Newcomb (UC Davis)

Teresa Pinheiro (TU Chemnitz)

Joan Ramon Resina (Stanford University)

Antonio Sáez Delgado (Universidade de Évora / Centro de Estudos Comparatistas-FLUL)

Mario Santana (University of Chicago)

Publications

• Gimeno Ugalde, E. (2017). “The Iberian Turn: an overview on Iberian Studies in the United States. Informes Del Observatorio / Observatorio Reports, 036-12/2017EN. https://doi.org/10.15427/OR036-12/2017EN
• Pérez Isasi, Santiago; Gimeno Ugalde, Esther (2019): “The IStReS database: Reflections on the configuration of the field of Iberian Studies”, Revista de Humanidades Digitales, 3, pp. 46-63.
• Gimeno Ugalde, Esther; Santiago Pérez Isasi (2019): “Lo ‘ibérico’ en los Estudios Ibéricos: meta-análisis del campo a través de sus publicaciones (2000-)”, in Núria Codina Solà and Teresa Pinheiro (eds.): Iberian Studies: Reflections Across Borders and Disciplines. Berlin: Peter Lang, pp. 23-48.
• Pérez Isasi, Santiago (2020): “¿Hacia unos Estudios Ibéricos 2.0? Críticas, debates y caminos abiertos”, Theory Now. Journal of Literature, Critique, and Thought 3 (2), pp. 145-167.

Conference presentations

• Pérez Isasi, Santiago: “IStReS: A tool for researchers in the area of (literary) Iberian Studies“, 39th Annual ACIS Conference, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, 4-6 September 2017.
• Gimeno Ugalde, Esther and Pérez Isasi, Santiago: “El proyecto IStReS: una base de datos de referencia para los Estudios Ibéricos“, III Congreso de Humanidades Digitales Hispánicas, Universidad de Málaga, Spain, 18-20 October 2017.
• Gimeno Ugalde, Esther and Pérez Isasi, Santiago: “Iberian Studies Reference Site (IStReS): Una herramienta para investigadores de Estudios Ibéricos“, II Jornadas de Estudios Culturales Ibéricos, TU Chemnitz, Germany, 16-18 November 2017.
• Gimeno Ugalde, Esther and Pérez Isasi, Santiago: “Iberian Studies Reference Site (IStReS): paisaje o retrato de los Estudios Ibéricos“, Colóquio Internacional ‘Os Estudos Ibéricos a partir da periferia’, Faculty of Arts, University of Lisbon, 8-9 March 2018.
• Pérez Isasi, Santiago: “¿Qué pueden hacer las Humanidades Digitales por los estudios literarios? Una genealogía con ejemplos“. Jornada ‘Humanidades Digitales y Filología’, Universidad de Cantabria, March 23, 2018.
• Pérez Isasi, Santiago: “Humanidades Digitais e estudos literários: os projectos Andrés de Poza, IStReS e Mapa Digital“, Seminário ‘Estudo do teatro e humanidades digitais’, Doutoramento em Estudos de Teatro, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa, May 21, 2018.
• Gimeno Ugalde, Esther: “Los estudios ibéricos en diálogo con los estudios gallegos, vascos y catalanes: oportunidades y retos,” Department of Translation and Applied Linguistics (IALT) and Etxepare Basque Institute, Leipzig University (Germany), June 25, 2018.
• Gimeno Ugalde, Esther and Pérez Isasi, Santiago: “La base de datos IStReS como herramienta para los estudios de traducción intra-ibéricos: centros, periferias y tendencias dominantes”, III Symposium on Literary Translation and Contemporary Iberia, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisboa, November 22-23, 2018.