euskalkultura.eus

Donostia-San Sebastian.  The Etxepare Basque Institute announced the creation of a new Basque Language and Culture assistantship at the University of Konstanz, Germany at a press conference this morning. Aizpea Goenaga, director, and Georg Kaiser, Professor at the University of Konstanz, signed the agreement to launch the assistantship that will begin along with the 2011-12 school year.

The assistantship will be housed within the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and linked to the linguistic and literature departments.  Its creation, along with the existing Catalan assistantship, gives rise to the Center of Iberian Languages at the university.

German Network

Goenaga highlighted that the assistantship is a “strategic priority” in the Institute’s activity, adding that in addition to “giving prestige” to the language, participating in academic life “generates interest and arouses curiosity” about the language and culture.

With this new assistantship at the University of Konstanz, Etxepare will have completed the network in Germany, where assistantships already exist at the Freie University in Berlin and the Goethe University in Frankfurt.  Activity in the Frankfurt program will expand next year with a search to fill the assistantship position, as well as creation of a fund to furnish books and other resources for the university’s Basque Library.

New Assistantships

In addition, Mari Jose Olaziregi, the Institute’s Director of Language Promotion, announced the opening of a new chair of Basque Studies at the University of Chicago, to accompany the new Bernardo Atxaga Chair at the City University of New York.  Chicago’s chair will be named after Koldo Mitxelena, linguist and promoter of the Basque language, and will allow professors and Basque experts to give classes and visit the university for a period of time. “The University of Chicago has demonstrated much interest in including Basque studies into it offerings and the center itself will co-finance the chair,” said Olaziregi to EuskalKultura.com.

The Bernardo Atxaga Chair will begin in September and will be filled by Atxaga himself. The inauguration will be celebrated with various cultural events relating to Basque literature, film and culture from September 11-18, 2011.