The UC Iberian Studies Consortium encourages interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students and scholars interested in the literatures, histories, and cultures of the Iberian Peninsula, including Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Euskara/Basque, and Asturian. By organizing lectures, reading sessions, and presentations, the group endeavors to reimagine Iberian Studies, complementing more historically canonical readings with non-canonical texts, documents, and visual culture. The group is dedicated to the study of the various languages and literary traditions of the Iberian Peninsula, approached and understood comparatively. The UC Iberian Studies Consortium serves the University of California as a whole.
It was founded in 2011 by Robert Patrick Newcomb (UC Davis) as the UC Comparative Iberian Studies Working Group, and received seed funding from the UC Humanities Research Institute. Newcomb and Silvia Bermúdez (UC Santa Barbara) have co-directed the group since its founding. This endowed fund supports an annual meeting of subject matter experts in Iberian Studies thanks to a generous gift from Roberta Lee Johnson (BA and MA, UC Davis; professor emerita, University of Kansas).