Literature and Historical Memory at the Jean Haritschelhar Chair in Bordeaux
Euskara. Kultura. Mundura.
The Jean Haritschelhar Chair at Université Bordeaux-Montaigne will celebrate its annual edition on the 13th and 14th of May. The guest professor this year is Mario Santana, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.
The Jean Haritschelhar Chair at Université Bordeaux-Montaigne will celebrate its annual edition on the 13th and 14th of May. The guest professor this year is Mario Santana, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago.
This year’s edition of the Chair will study the use of historical memory on contemporary Spanish and Basque literature. There will be a full-day event on May 13th in Bordeaux, with several experts in addition to Santana. The opening of the event will be led by Garbiñe Iztueta, head of Basque Language Promotion at the Etxepare Basque Institute. Professor Santana will then give a lecture titled "Una poética de la redención: historia y memoria en la ficción contemporánea" (A poetic of redemption: history and memory in contemporary fiction). Next will be Jesús Alonso and Amélie Florenchi, professors at Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, and Maria Jose Olaziregi from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Finally, there will be a roundtable discussion in Bordeaux with Rocío Negrete Peña and Rachel Marot-Rouichi from Bordeaux-Montaigne, and Ane Villagran and Ainhoa Urzelai from the UPV/EHU.
The next day, May 15th, the activities of the Chair will move to Bayonne. Following the same subject, Professor Santana will give another lecture, this time entitled “Memoria histórica y ficción contemporánea ibérica” (Iberian historical memory and contemporary fiction). In addition, Professor Iñaki Aldekoa from the UPV/EHU will give a lecture under the title “Iragan gertuaren memoria literarioa. Belaunaldien arteko solasa: Ramon Saizarbitoria eta Uxue Alberdi” (Literary memory from the recent past: an intergenerational conversation: Ramon Saizarbitoria and Uxue Alberdi). Finally, Mario Santana will repeat the Bordeaux lecture on May 15th, this time at the UPV/EHU Faculty of Arts in Vitoria-Gasteiz, although not part of the official Chair programme.
Guest Professor and the Chair
Professor Mario Santana is a native of the Canary Islands, Spain. He has graduate degrees in Philosophy (University of Barcelona) and Literature (Columbia University), and is an expert in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish and Catalan literature, and twentieth-century Latin American literature, with particular emphasis on narrative and film. He is the author of Foreigners in the Homeland: The Spanish American New Novel in Spain, 1962-1974.
The Jean Haritschelhar Chair, managed by the Etxepare Basque Institute, was created in 2016 at Université Bordeaux-Montaigne to promote Basque Studies. The Chair focuses on the area of study of politician and researcher Jean Haritschelhar, which primarily embraces Basque literature and linguistics and Iberian Studies.