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Basque Studies Program Newsletter · Issue
60, 1999
Basque Studies Program Undergoes
Program Review
Every ten years the University of Nevada examines
departments on campus to evaluate progress, productivity,
and needs for the future. This process requires lengthy
self-examination and a site visit by respected scholars in
the same field. Basque Studies would like to thank the three
scholars who took the time to read over sixty pages of text
and documentation about our past, present, and future, and
who traveled to Reno to visit us and talk about our plans
for the future.
Robert P. Clark, author of several respected works
about the Basques, including The Basques: The Franco
Years and Beyond, is a professor of government in the
Department of Public and International Affairs at George
Mason University in Virginia. Dr. Clark served as chair of
the external review team.
Begoña Aretxaga, author of Shattering
Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in
Northern Ireland, as well as works about Basque
nationalism, was the 1998 John L. Loeb Associate Professor
of Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at
Harvard University in Massachusetts.
Jacqueline Urla, whose dissertation Being Basque,
Speaking Basque, and other research interests that are
very Basque-centered and quite well known in the field of
Basque Studies, is Associate Professor of Anthropology at
the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst.
The external review team made several suggestions
regarding the future of the Basque Studies Program. The
visitors strongly urged us to change our name to
“Center for Basque Studies,” which would more
accurately reflect our ongoing activities with regard to the
production of world-class research, as well as our visiting
scholars program. The team also suggested that we do more to
disseminate the scholarship that emerges from research
undertaken here and that we consider launching a
high-quality journal.
Future successes, according to the review team, may
well hinge upon an increase in the number of faculty
positions at Basque Studies. They were concerned that, with
so few faculty, research activities would be limited by the
quotidian demands of administration and the need to provide
teaching and classes in support of the Basque minor and the
Basque Tutorial Ph.D.
In addition to research and scholarship, the review
team noted that the BSP “performs an outreach and
service function that is unparalleled for most research and
academic units of a university.” Faculty and staff
respond personally to requests for information from a broad
spectrum of the public, from families researching their
heritage to media moguls creating Basque-related films. The
BSP also serves in an ambassadorial capacity, playing host
to dignitaries, politicians, and other public figures from
the Basque Country. The review team also had praise for the
Basque Book Series, published by the University of Nevada
Press.
The visitors’ recommendations and comments have
been reported to the University administration. Meanwhile,
the faculty and staff of the BSP are heeding their advice
and working together to plan for the next thirty years of
Basque Studies at our university.
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