Those who know her say that she is a cultured, intelligent and generous person in all her facets. She was a professor of Ancient History at the University of the Basque Country and, currently, an honorary collaborator in its Department of Classical Studies. Ana Iriarte Goñí will also be, from now on, Honorary Doctor from the University of Oviedo, at the proposal of the Deméter Group. Motherhood, gender and family, founded and led by professors from the Asturian academic institution.
She smiles on the other end of the phone line, when she answers the call from elDiario.es Asturias, because from Euskadi she waits “impressed and excited” for the moment of her investiture in Oviedo. She recognizes that this is a “small recognition” and that in no case is she considered an equal to the women, few, only three, who received this appointment at the University of Oviedo, because “they are great.” Refers to Margarita Salas and Sheila Sherlock.
“Rosa tends to get me into trouble,” he says, laughing. He refers to Rosa Cid, an Asturian professor, friend and person responsible for this proposal. Ana Iriarte was in Pergamo when she received the news, and she did so with surprise and gratitude, because, despite having been informed that her name had been proposed, she never thought it would materialize.
On her route through the lands of Herodotus and Troy, she had turned away after getting off a cable car because she was dizzy. It was then that she looked at her phone and saw the news on an Asturian digital channel. “My discomfort went away suddenly, but I was still dizzy, although for other, happier reasons,” she says.
Iriarte came into contact with Asturian academics almost thirty years ago, in 1989, in Jarandilla de la Vera (Cáceres), at the founding congress of ARYS, the Association of Antiquity, Religions and Societies. There he met the historians Rosa Cid and Amparo Pedregal for the first time, and there they began to forge a close and thorough professional relationship, as well as a sincere friendship that has brought them here.
At that congress Ana learned about the paths of Ancient History in Spain, since she came from Paris, where she had studied for thirteen years and had prepared and presented her doctoral thesis, and there the perspective was very different from that existing in the Spain of late 80s and early 90s.
A disciple of the Hellenist and anthropologist, Nicole Loraux, like her teacher, had a very different conception of ancient history and the role of women in it, from what was held here in Spain, burdened by forty years of dictatorship. That amazed her Asturian colleagues in their first contacts, and yet, it is Iriarte herself who assures that she also had a lot to learn from them.
After giving a conference in Asturias in March 1992, which was her first visit to a region and a university that she loves and “that makes herself loved,” in 1994 she taught her first classes in the newly opened gender studies of the University of Oviedo, through the Doctoral Program in Gender and Diversity, which would later become the Master of Gender and Diversity.
Paris, 80s
Ana Iriarte began her career by addressing, through a study, the way in which the Greeks defined communication with women in Ancient Greece, she delved into the political meaning of theater and asked, for example, how a woman could exercise citizenship if they did not have political rights to do so: without public voice, without the right to vote or without the possibility of holding political office.
Parallel to her immersion in ancient Greece and the role that women played in it, Ana Iriarte lives in a Paris that, as she claims, “was not a point of mass tourism and kitschy lovers.” In those years, the French capital was an explosion of political development and feminist thought, which drank from May 68, and where Iriarte teachers, such as Jean Pierre Vernant, focused their debates on politics, while the city experienced a strong feminist movement that was interested in women in all systems, even in Ancient Greece, where democracy was born by denying women the vote.
Ana Iriarte was a breath of fresh air that could renew studies of the ancient world from a double perspective: gender and historical anthropology.
Rosa Cid refers to that newcomer as “a breath of fresh air that could renew the studies of the ancient world,” and she did so from a double perspective. On the one hand, incorporating the gender perspective, that is, demonstrating what had never been seen or thought of until that moment in Spain, that a good story could be made from feminist commitment; and on the other hand, including historical anthropology, addressing the analysis of myths from a historical perspective.
The French school from which Ana Iriarte came was absolutely transgressive for Spain in the 90s, since Iriarte was in contact with intellectuals such as Michel Foucault or Gilles Deleuze, and others less transgressive such as Jaquellines de Romilly.
For being a pioneer in the introduction in Spain of new methodologies for studying the ancient world, for her innovative nature and for the novelty of her work and her contribution to Spanish historiography, Rosa Cid considers that the recognition that Ana Iriarte will receive tomorrow, Wednesday, is more How deserved and necessary.
The professional recognition from her Asturian colleagues is reciprocated by this woman from Pamplona who highlights the bravery of the team from the Principality’s academic institution when it came to launching gender studies at the University of Oviedo, pioneers in its implementation. And at the beginning of the 90s, gender studies were absolutely undervalued, she says, and “they, knowing what was happening in other European countries, knew that feminist studies had a present and a future,” she concludes.
Demeter Group
The Deméter Group is a research group founded in 2006 by the professor of Ancient History at the University of Oviedo, and specialist in the history of women and gender in antiquity, Rosa Cid. Deméter is made up of historians specialized in the history of women, although throughout these almost 20 years it has been growing and also incorporating the profile of jurists and some historians. It is the group that has proposed Ana Iriarte for the Honoris Causa.
Demeter arose from the need to analyze history from a gender perspective, changing the subject studied and placing women in the focus. They are currently immersed in the research project ‘Intrafamilial and political vulnerability in the ancient world’, whose main objective is to define the subjects of vulnerability inside and outside the family in Greek, Roman and Egyptian Antiquity. Starting from a social and cultural perspective, they propose giving relevance, for example, to age groups, the option between free and slave population, or that between citizen and non-citizen.
In this way, Susana Reboreda Morillo, from the Universidade de Vigo, and Rosa María Cid López, from the University of Oviedo, lead an international group of historians from Spanish universities (Vigo, Oviedo, Basque Country, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid ); Italian universities (Bologna, Benevento, Naples) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Ana Irirarte will be inaugurated and will receive the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa tomorrow, Wednesday, November 6, at twelve noon, in the Auditorium of the Old Building of the University of Oviedo, thus joining the Spanish scientist, Margarita Salas (1996). and the British doctor, Sheila Sherlock (1998), both from the area of Medicine, and becoming the third Honorary Doctor of the Asturian university, the first from the area of Humanities.
From 1967 to the present there are 76 honorary doctors from the University of Oviedo, with only three women, including Ana Iriarte Goñi.
The existing gap, therefore, between the number of men and women awarded Honoris Causa is evident and a product of the invisibility of women throughout history in the academic field and in all areas. In this sense, the rector Ignacio Villaverde himself assures that this is a reality that must be worked on and the rector’s team has gotten to work.
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