The aim of the present lecture is to explore Robert Laxalt’s connection with the Basque exile in the United States. Basque politics does not play a prominent role in Robert Laxalt’s work, but there are some relevant references to Basque political issues in some of his books. Besides, it is worth examining Laxalt’s connection with several Basque exiles, in particular, with Jon Bilbao. In fact, Laxalt’s collaboration with these exiles became a key factor in the promotion of Basque culture in the United States, as exemplified by the creation of the Basque Studies Program at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1967.
DAVID RIO is Professor of American Literature at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) in Vitoria-Gasteiz. His research interests are located within the field of American Studies, with an emphasis on diaspora studies, regional literatures, and especially western American writing and Basque-American literature. He is the author of El proceso de la violencia en la narrativa de Robert Penn Warren (1995), Robert Laxalt: The Voice of the Basques in American Literature (2007) and New Literary Portraits of the American West: Contemporary Nevada Fiction (2014). He has also co-edited six volumes on the literature of the American West (the latest one is The Western in the Global Literary Imagination, 2022) and the special issue of the journal Western American Literature on “Writing the Global Western” (2019). He is also the editor of La expansión y revisión de un mito: el Oeste norteamericano en la literatura española (2023). David Rio coordinates an international research group (REWEST) specialized in the literature and culture of the American West.
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