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The 2014 edition of the Bernardo Atxaga Chair, supported by the Etxepare Basque Institute at the City University of New York (CUNY) will begin next Monday.  This year the chair will focus on the most recent Basque literature from the 80s to the present, thanks to Professors Nerea Arruti and Mari Jose Olaziregi.  In addition, this cycle will be complemented with concerts by Ruper Ordorika, accompanied by Ben Monder, and Josu Okiñena. 

New York, NY. “From Oblivion to Omnipresent Past in the Current Basque Narrative” is the theme to be analyzed at this year’s Bernardo Atxaga Chair at CUNY from October 6-10th.  University of the Basque Country professors, Nerea Arruti and Mari Jose Olaziregi will be in charge of teaching the academic program.  Basque literature from the last four decades will be studied in class including literary creations from the 80s that recall a mythical past, to proposals where the recent controversial political past has gained almost absolute prominence.

The Chair will also include a cultural program that is open to the public that this year, in collaboration with the Mike Laboa Chair at the University of the Basque Country will provide two concerts.  On the one hand, the Basque singer Ruper Ordorika and his collaborator Ben Monder, who will perform on October 6th at the Martin Segal Theater. On the other, pianist Josu Okiñena will give a concert/recital in honor of Aita Donostia on October 10th in the Skylight Room.

Nerea Arruti 

She studied Basque Philology at the University of Deusto and did her Ph.D. thesis on Argentinean Literature at King’s College in London.  She has lived in the UK since 1989, and has been a literature professor in Hispanic departments at the University of Exeter and Goldsmiths College in London. She is currently employed at the University of Aberdeen. She was a researcher at the University of Nevada Reno during the summer of 2001.  Her research interests have focused on themes like contemporary literature and art.  She has published on the Guggenheim museum and regarding theory, she has published on studies done on memory: Trauma, Therapy and Representation, in the Paragraph Magazine in Edinburgh.

Mari Jose Olaziregi

She is a doctor of Basque Philology and a Full Professor at the University of the Basque Country (College of Arts, Vitoria-Gasteiz).  She has been an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and a guest professor at the Universität Konstanz (Germany).  She is a correspondent member of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language – Euskaltzaindia, director of the Basque Literature Series in Translation at the Center for Basque Studies, UNR, Reno and coordinator since 2011 of the Researchers’ network on the Historical Memory in Iberian Literature.  Since 2010, she has been the Director for the Promotion and Diffusion of the Basque Language at the Etxepare Basque Institute.  Among her publications we would highlight: Euskal eleberriaren historia (Labayru, 2002), Waking the Hedgehog: The Literary Universe of Bernardo Atxaga (Center for Basque Studies-University of Nevada, 2004), An Anthology of Basque Short Stories (CBS, 2004), translated into Spanish, Italian and Russian; Six Basque Poets (Arc Publications, 2007) o History of Basque Literature (CBS, 2011).

Ruper Ordorika
www.ruperordorika.com

Ben Monder
www.benmonder.com

Josu Okiñena
www.josuokiñena.com