Faculty & Staff
BASQUE STUDIES DIRECTORS:
David Lachiondo, PhD
Director
BOISE STATE BASQUE STUDIES PROGRAM
208-425-5331
email: davidlachiondo@boisestate.eduEducation:
B.A. St. Mary’s College, California
M.A. Idaho State University
PhD. University of IdahoDave Lachiondo has had a long career as an educator in both public and parochial schools. He has served as a teacher, coach, guidance counselor, principal and central office administrator in both the Boise Public Schools and at Bishop Kelly High School in Boise, Idaho. After retiring in 2010, he assumed the position of Director of Basque Studies. He teaches Basque History: Pre-History to 1700, Modern Basque History and The Spanish Civil War.
John Bieter
Assistant Director,
BOISE STATE BASQUE STUDIES PROGRAM
208-426-5332
email: johnbieter@boisestate.eduEducation:
B.A. University of St. Thomas
M.A. Boise State University
Ph. D. Boston CollegeJohn Bieter graduated from the University of St. Thomas with a degree in Social Science and a concentration in Economics. He completed his Masters degree at Boise State University and his thesis was published as An Enduring Legacy: A History of the Basques in Idaho. John earned his doctoral degree from Boston College where he focused his research and teaching interests on Immigration and Ethnicity, the American West, and American Catholicism.
Currently, John serves as an advisor for pre-service educators in the College of Social Sciences and Public Affairs and as Assitant Director of the Center for Basque Studies.
Nere Lete
Assistant Professor of Basque & Director of Basque Studies Minor
BOISE STATE BASQUE STUDIES PROGRAM
email: nlete@boisestate.eduEducation:
M.F.A University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa. 1994
B.A University of Deusto, Donostia. Basque Country. 1986Nere Lete, a native of the Basque Country attended Basque schools during Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. Nere received her first Basque language teaching certificate from Euskaltzaindia when she was 15. And later, she studied Basque Philology in the Basque Country. While pursuing her studies, Nere worked for Basque television and film translating and adapting scripts. She also worked as a voice-over dubbing actress. Nere was also a puppeteer for Basque children programming.
She received a grant to teach Basque at the University of Nevada in Reno in 1988. She has taught Basque and Spanish in the Basque Country, University of Nevada – Reno, University of Iowa and Boise State University. In 1994 Nere received her Master of Fine Arts degree in translation from the University of Iowa. She has been an instructor on and off at Boise State University since 1994 (she took some time to raise her children bilingually.)
Now, an Assistant Professor of Basque at Boise State University, besides teaching Basque language she also teaches Basque culture, literature, art history, and cinema in Spanish and English under the department of Modern Languages and Literatures. Nere keeps close working relationship with the Basque Museum and Cultural Center of Boise, and with the Boiseko Ikastola, the first Basque language preschool in the United States which she helped to create.
BASQUE STUDIES ADJUNCT FACULTY:
The Boise State University Basque Studies Minor is very fortunate to welcome to campus expert faculty on Basque Studies topics who teach weekend workshops.
Izaskun Kortazar
Education
M.A. in Spanish Literature from Washington State University 2006
B.A. in English Language Teaching Certificate from the University of the Basque Country 2003
B.A. in Basque Language and Literature from the University of the Basque Country 2000Izaskun Kortazar Errekatxo is a native of the Basque Country. She learned Basque at the age of 13 and she received Basque certifications of EGA and HEO at the age of 18. Since then, she has taught Basque language to very diverse students, such as, international university students, parents, children, prisoners…She has also taught all the levels of Basque from the basic level to EGA at the “IKA Euskaltegia” for 3 years and basic Basque at the University of the Basque Country.
Izaskun lived in London and Scotland before she moved to the US in 2003 to teach Basque at Boiseko Ikastola. She has taught Spanish language at University of Idaho, Washington State University and Boise State University. She is currently teaching Spanish at Boise State University, where she also teaches Basque Study Group and Basque Conversation. She is currently teaching Basque to adults at the Basque Museum and Cultural Center in Boise. In 2008 she will teach two workshops on Basque Mythology and Basque Culture under the Basque Studies program.
John YsursaEducation:
B.A. Boise State University
M.A. University of California, Riverside
Ph. D. University of California, RiversideJohn Ysursa graduated from Boise State University with a degree in History. He then continued with graduate studies and completed his Masters at University of California, Riverside where he wrote a thesis on the Basques of Southern California. He continued at UCR to complete his Ph.D. studies and wrote his dissertation on Religion and the Coming of the American Civil.
Previously he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of history at the University of Redlands and more recently a Senior Lecturer at San Diego State University. John is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History, where he is working as part of a team seeking to establish a Basque Studies program at Boise State. In addition to working with students and offering courses and workshops in Basque Studies, he will be helping in the formation of a Basque Studies Consortium that seeks to embrace various departments at Boise State as well as state, national and international academic institutions engaged in Basque Studies while pursuing community engagement efforts.
Lisa CorcosteguiEducation:
Ph.D., Basque Studies (Anthropology) – University of Nevada, Reno
M.A., Foreign Language and Literature (Spanish) – University of Nevada, Reno
B.A., Foreign Language and Literature (Spanish) Minor: Basque Studies – University of Nevada, RenoTeaching/Research Interests:
History and Aesthetics of Basque Dance Dance as an Ethnic Marker Symbol and Metaphor in DanceDiasporic Ethnic Identity Alterity and Identity Old World Basque Culture Ancestry, Genealogy and Heraldry Basque Music Appreciation Gender in Basque Culture .
Maite Núñez-Betelu
Education:
Doctor of Philosophy Romance Languages, University of Missouri-Columbia
Master of Arts Comparative Literature, West Virginia University
Bachelor of Arts English, University of the Basque Country, SpainProfessional Experience
Maite has worked as an Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis since August 2002. Prior to that she was a Visiting Assistant Professor and a graduate student at the University of Missouri-Columbia from 1995-2001 and as a teachning assistant in 1999. From 1993 through 1995 she was a graduate assistant at West Virginia University.
Xabier Irujo, Ph.D.
Education
Assistant Professor Xabier Irujo Ametzaga, Ph.D., was born in exile in Caracas, Venezuela, and educated in the Basque Country. He holds three master’s degrees -in linguistics, history and philosophy- and is studying for a fourth, in law, from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) in Madrid.
Irujo earned a Ph.D. in history from the State University of Navarre, with a dissertation on “Basque Exile in Uruguay, 1943–1955”. He is currently completing a second Ph.D. in Basque political philosophy at the Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, with a dissertation on “Europe of the Peoples”. His research focuses on the Contemporary Basque Politics, Basque Government-in-Exile (1937-1975) and today politics (2007).
Jill Aldape
Education
Jill Aldape graduated from the University of Idaho with Bachelor of Arts degrees in Spanish and International Studies. She traveled to the Basque Country as a Fulbright Scholar and studied Basque language and dance.
Upon her return to Boise, she taught Euskara classes for beginners at the Basque Museum & Cultural Center, and several sections of Spanish as an adjunct instructor for the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at Boise State University.
Jill is a former Dance Director, former President, and current member of the Oinkari Basque Dancers of Boise and currently serves on the board of the Cenarrusa Foundation for Basque Culture. She enjoys being part of a newly-formed Basque folk-rock musical ensemble called Amuma Says No and loves visiting cultural festivals throughout the northwest.
Jill works at Saint Alponsus as Director of Events & Development within the Foundation and is very proud to have deep family roots in Idaho.
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Sandra Ott
D.Phil., Social Anthropology, University of Oxford. Associate professor and Co-director, Center for Basque Studies at University of Nevada, Reno.
I am working on a book project, Crimes and Punishments: Collaborators, the Courts and Purge Justice in the Pyrenean Borderlands, 1944-1953,
which focuses on the trials of suspected collaborators in the court of justice in Pau, France. The book takes an ethnographic approach to the trials and other period documents by reconstructing relationships formed by Basque and French citizens with the Germans in their midst and then explores the ways in which the post-liberation authorities evaluated those relationships and explored the motives underlying them during the period of pre-trial discovery, the trials themselves, the process of appeal and applications for amnesty that so often followed. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book project uses anthropological and sociological theories to expand our understanding of the ambiguities, complexities and opportunism that frequently characterized Franco-German and Franco-French relations during the occupation.
(Information extracted from the Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno website.)
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Joseba Zulaika
Ph.D., Anthropology, Princeton University. Professor and Co-director, Center for Basque Studies at University of Nevada, Reno
Ongoing research: the Bilbao Guggenheim Museoa and the ethnography of Bilbao with additional emphasis on global culture, architecture, museum
politics, and tourism industries. Primary research interests: Basque culture and politics, the international discourse of terrorism, various traditional occupations (fishermen, hunters, farmers), diasporic and global cultures, history of anthropological thought, theories of symbolism, ritual and discourse.
(Information extracted from the Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno website.)
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