euskalkultura.eus

Chicago, Illinois.  Anthropologist Joseba Zulaika, director at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, has spent the month of January teaching at the University of Chicago as part of the Koldo Michelena Chair, sponsored by the Etxepare Basque Institute.  Zulaika is guest professor of this second edition of the course, entitled "The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: Museums, Architecture, Urban Renewal.”

According to the Etxepare Institute, "Zulaika seeks to analyze the ability of architecture to transform the image, and touristic attraction, of a postindustrial city by studying the effect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. In fact, the “Guggenheim Effect" has become required material of study in schools that teach related subjects such as architecture, museology, tourism or urban renewal.”

The course is multidisciplinary in nature; cultural studies, anthropology, city planning and architecture, museums and pop culture.  Additionally, as a complement to the Chair, they also organized two conferences.  The first took place last Monday, on January 28, where Zulaika analyzed, along with University of Chicago professor, Karlos Arregi, the utilization of the allocutive in Basque from the point of view of the anthropologist and linguist.  In the second, that took place yesterday, Zulaika spoke on “Gernika, Bilbao and Minotaur: from Picasso to Gehry.”

Three Chairs

The Etxepare Basque Institute supports three Chairs of Basque studies in prestigious international universities: The Bernardo Atxaga Chair at the City University of New York, inaugurated in 2011, the Koldo Mitxelena Chair at the University of Chicago which started in 2012,and the Eduardo Chillida Chair that will be inaugurated this spring at the University of Goethe in Frankfurt, Germany.

The Chair at the University of Chicago is named for the linguist Koldo Mitxelena and was created in 2012 in order to promote the dissemination of Basque studies at American universities. It is part of the department of the Division of Humanities and welcomes a professor annually.  The first to hold the Chair was Professor of Phonology at the University of the Basque Country, Lourdes Oñederra.