Reception for UT Argentine Center
Larry R. Faulkner
November 4, 1999
Law School, Sheffield Room
The University of Texas at Austin
Today we are pleased to announce the formation of a new Center for Argentine Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. The center will join three other centers within UT's Institute of Latin American Studies--the Brazil Center, the Mexican Center, and the Center for Environmental Resource Management in Latin America. I am especially pleased with the development of this new center, and the ongoing excellence of the older, more established programs in ILAS, because they complement and strengthen one of my administration's major initiatives, which is to firmly establish UT as the leading university in Latin American studies in the United States. That goal is within reach. In fact, we are already regarded as the best in the country by many observers. But quality is a moving target, and we intend to grow and improve in order to maintain our national status.
Despite Argentina's central importance in virtually every aspect of Latin American history, culture, and economics, no center for the specific study of Argentina exists in this country. For a number of reasons, UT and ILAS are the perfect hosts for a center of this kind:
- ILAS is widely regarded as the premier Latin American institute in the U.S., with more than 100 affiliated faculty members who work primarily in the area of Latin America.
- In academic subjects related to Latin America, we graduate more students at the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels than any other U.S. university.
- UT's Benson Latin American Collection contains more than 700,000 volumes and is exceeded only by the Library of Congress.
- The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center recently acquired a major collection of papers by renowned Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. The collection contains more than 400 rare items, including several unpublished manuscripts and personal notebooks.
- UT's Latin American art collection includes works by more than 250 Latin American artists. A large portion of the new Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art will be dedicated to Latin American art.
- UT Press is the leading publisher of Latin American subjects in the U.S., with over one-third of its book list pertaining to Latin America.
- UT-LANIC, the Latin American Network Information Center, is the world's premier electronic gateway to Latin American subjects on the worldwide web. LANIC is administered by ILAS and receives more than two million hits a month and maintains links to more than 12,000 Web sites.
This is an impressive institutional commitment to Latin American studies. UT is proud of its international visibility and its reputation as a leader in the field. Because of our status, we feel that the new Center for Argentine Studies will quickly gain a high profile in the American academy and at the same time enhance and enrich the research and teaching mission of The University.
The Center is an extremely attractive concept because it opens a two-way street between Argentina and Texas. On the one hand we will reach out to students and scholars from Argentina, offering graduate student fellowships, research funds, scholarly conferences, and other opportunities to use UT collections and facilities and to collaborate with UT faculty members in many disciplines. We will also give UT students and professors, and other non-Argentine scholars, the financial opportunity to travel to Argentina for research, study, and cultural exchange. This is what I had in mind when I called for an active Latin American initiative, and I am impressed with the vision and determination of the Institute of Latin American Studies for bringing this center to life.
I would like to thank Nicolas Shumway, the director of ILAS, for his leadership on this project. He has been instrumental in making it happen, and the University is grateful to him for his hard work and dedication.
We stole Professor Shumway from Yale. He is the Tomás Rivera Regents Professor of Spanish Language and Literature, the author of numerous articles and reviews--and the book The Invention of Argentina. Appropriately, he is now responsible for the invention of the Argentina Center at UT.
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As I mentioned earlier, UT recently acquired a large archive of the work of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. Borges was a longtime friend and admirer of this University. He first visited the United States in 1961 as a guest professor in Romance languages here at UT Austin. He returned on other occasions to make use of the literary collections in the Humanities Research Center. He wrote a short story set on the UT campus, and a sonnet entitled "Texas," which was published in a limited edition of 295 copies by the Humanities Research Center in 1975. In a letter to a UT librarian, Borges said, "Texas is a country I greatly love. My mind is full of wistful memories of Austin and of the days I spent there with my mother, way back in '61." UT and the land of Texas exerted a special magnetism on the great writer and his imagination.
Dr. Rodriguez, on behalf of The University of Texas I would like to present to you one of the limited-edition copies of the sonnet "Texas" by Jorge Luis Borges. May that special magnetism that Borges felt for this place always be manifested between our two cultures.
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