This volume contains seven of the eleven papers offered at the First Catalan Symposium organized by the Center for Catalan Studies at The Catholic University of America, October, 1990. Under the general topic of The Present State of Catalan Studies in North America, it contains papers by Patricia J. Boehne, Robert I. Burns, S.J., Peter Cocozzella, Roberto J. Gonzalez Casanovas, Montserrat Piera, and Josep M. Sola-Sole, and an introduction by Ellen Ginsberg. This volume will be the first of a series, generated by annual symposia, and is dedicated to the memory of Father Pauli Bellet, O.S.B., who, from 1962 until his death in 1987, regularly taught a Catalan course in the department of Modern Languages and Literatures at CUA.