Research Seminar: "The Girls are coming. Gender, Youth and New Basque Literature"

A research seminar on Basque Literature will take place the 23rd November in the Strathcona building, Lecture Theatre 6, at 3.00pm. Dr. Katixa Agirre will give a lecture entitled "The Girls Are Coming. Gender, Youth and the New Basque Literature".

In 2010, 2,499 books were published in the Basque Autonomous Comunity -a part of the Basque Country. This region formed by Biscay, Araba and Gipuzkoa has 2,124,846 inhabitants. Nearly 50% of that population is able to understand Basque, but not all of them are current Basque culture consumers. Lets say that, including the rest of Basque speakers who do not live in the Basque Autonomous Community, the social group that habitually consumes Basque literature will not be, unfortunately, more than 800,000 readers.

870 books (out of the 2,499) were published in Basque. This means that a book was written for every 919 readers. This percentage is a clear evidence of the importance that nowadays Basque literature has for the Basque culture. And a significant part of those books were written by a new wave of female authors.



Dr. Katixa Agirre is a well-known Basque writer that could be considered as part of that new wave. She will visit the University of Birmingham the 23rd of November to take part in the next Hispanic Research Seminar to give a lecture entitled "The Girls Are Coming. Gender, Youth and the New Basque Literature".

"This seminar will explore one of the most relevant phenomena in contemporary Basque literature: the advent, over the last decade, of a significant number of female authors to a male-dominated literary environment. Young female writers’ bittersweet encounter with readers, critics, and the media will be discussed."


Dr. Katixa Agirre published her first book in 2007, Sua Falta Zaigu (Elkar), and the same year she published her first children's book Paularen Seigarren Atzamarra (Elkar). In 2007 she was awarded the Igartza grant to write the book Habitat, which was published in 2009.

The seminar will take place in the Strathcona building, Lecture Theatre 6, at 3.00pm. Refreshments will be available after the seminar.

Third chapter: "On the trail"

What? Haven´t you already enjoyed our wonderful photo-novel in Basque, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese? Have a look then; it is getting more and more interesting!

These are the links to The mysterious case of the Ashley building, the third chapter: On the trail!  in Basque, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese. Enjoy it!

COMPETITION: Guess who in Catalan

Our first year students participate in the 1st Catalan Guess Who competition where they will have to guess which of their classmates were those cute little babies.