Coat of Arms of the town of Hondarribia by local painter Javier Sagarzazu

Introduction

The Spring 2009 issue of TINTA: Research Journal of Hispanic and Lusophone Studies unites proceedings of the 2008 Basque Symposium held at UCSB as well as original short stories and works of poetry.  The creative writings are a new feature of the journal and we hope to continue publishing this type of writing in issues to come.

An overriding theme of the Basque Symposium papers is the history of Basque language and literature.  Mari Jose Olaziregi provides an overview of the history of Basque literature as well as a synopsis of Landa´s short stories in Basque, Spanish, and English can be read in this issue.  The history of Basque language and literature is also the focus of the paper by Xabier I. Irujo Ametzaga.  José Ignacio Hualde, for his part, explores different attitudes toward language mixing in Basque literary language while Julen Manterola Agirre looks at agglutination in the Basque language through time.  Ricardo Etxepare, a visiting professor at UCSB at the time of the Basque Symposium, discusses in his article the possible uses of a syntactic atlas of the Basque language.   

Along with Landa´s creative work presented in the Basque Symposium, our current issue contains original writing in Spanish and English with poetry with the theme of “D” by María Elena Arias-Zelidón as well as contemplative verses by Yasmina Vallejos.  The issue also features a short story by Silvia Llanto Cadenas involving the evasive and mysterious “Julieta” as well as Clara Mengolini´s narrative of an unexpected and disturbing cockroach invasion.

As always, we hope that the interested scholar will find TINTA to be a forum for academic discussion and inspiration. TINTA welcomes submissions for future issues at any time. Papers should be related to the literature, language, or culture of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds. We publish twice a year, in December and June. Articles received in December or June will be considered for publication in the next issue.

Last, but not least, we greatly appreciate the collaboration of guest editors Professor Viola Miglio, who was in charge of the Basque symposium papers, and Nora León.

TINTA Editors-in-Chief

Gloria Galindo and Amber Workman