UNICEN: Amale Artetxe Chair 2021

Beñat Sarasola, professor at the University of the Basque Country, will be the Amale Artetxe Chair guest lecturer this year. The programme which will consist of a seminar aimed at postgraduate students and a conference open to the university community.

The seminar ´El pensamiento estético vasco en el siglo XX: identidad, particularismo y diferencia´ (Basque aesthetic thought in the 20th century: identity, particularism and difference) will be held from 1st to 5th November as part of the Doctoral Programme in History, based at the Faculty of Human Sciences Institute of Historical and Social Studies, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (UNICEN).

The objective of this 20-hour course is to analyse Basque aesthetic thought and discussion in the context of historical events of the 20th century. Starting from the aesthetic assumptions of the Generation of ´98, the course will focus on the 1930s and the Basque cultural renaissance (Euskal Pizkundea) that took place in the the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939). The debates between the cultural ideologist Jose Ariztimuño, "Aitzol", and the poets Xabier Lizardi, Nikolas Ormaetxea, "Orixe", and Estepan Urkiaga, "Lauaxeta", among others, were fundamental to what Aitzol called the "peculiar aesthetics of Basque poetry". The next phase will deal with the aesthetics of Jorge Oteiza, of the generation of the late Francoist and Transition periods, and finally of the generation of the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium.

Sarasola will also give a lecture entitled ´Literatura vasca traducida al castellano (1989-202)´ (Basque literature translated into Spanish (1989-2021). The introduction will be given by Dr. Marcelino Iriani (IEHS-IGEHC-UNICEN/CONICET). The lecture will be live online on 5th November at 6pm (Argentina Time. UTC/GMT -3 hours) and registration can be done by writing to the following email address doctoradohistoria@yahoo.com.ar before 4th November.

Historically, literature in Basque has attracted little interest and, until the end of the 20th century, was rarely translated into other languages. Bernardo Atxaga´s ‘Obabakoak’ won the Spanish National Prize for Literature in 1989, and since then a growing number of books have been translated from the Basque language. In this lecture, Beñat Sarasola will talk about Basque literature translated into Spanish, starting with the milestone novel ‘Obabakoakak’. He will also present some of the discussions taking place currently around Basque literature and translation and the way in which literature in Basque has managed (or not) to overcome the glass ceiling set by the most prominent languages of literature in Europe.

Biography

Beñat Sarasola (Donostia, 1984), author, literary critic and teacher, holds a degree in Philosophy and Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from the University of Barcelona. He has published two collections of poems in Basque, ´Alea´ (2009) and ´Kaxa huts bat´ (2007), and has translated Philip Roth´s book ´Nemesis´ into Basque. In 2019 his first published novel ´Deklaratzekorik ez´ was published by Susa publishers. For a year he directed and presented Sautrela, a programme on literature on ETB 1 TV. Today he contributes articles on literature for various publications.

The Amale Artetxe Chari

The Amale Artetxe Chair was launched in 2019 in collaboration with the Argentinean institution CONICET (National Council for Scientific and Technical Research) to promote Basque studies in the humanities through academic and research activities. Honouring Amale Artetxe´s contribution to the Basque diaspora in Argentina, this Chair analyses Basque culture from the perspective of the humanities, with an emphasis on equality.