UCLA

Department of Spanish and Portuguese
Spring 1999 Newsletter

Message from the Chair
Mario Vargas Llosa
Juan Goytisolo
Cinema Novo and Beyond
Recent Events
Faculty, Student, and Alumni News

Vargas Llosa and Goytisolo Visit UCLA

Message from the Chair, Randal Johnson

The 1998-99 academic year has been a very fruitful one for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. We welcomed a new colleague, Elizabeth Marchant, on the Portuguese side of the aisle, as well as two visiting professors, John Kronik of Cornell University and Marta Luján of the University of Texas. We completed our revisions of the undergraduate Spanish major, and, thanks to the efforts of Susan Plann, we made great progress toward initiating courses in Business Spanish and Medical Spanish. We also approved an expanded series of courses in Spanish for Heritage Speakers that was developed by Montserrat Reguant. Our summer program in Granada is going strong, and this summer we will also begin a program in Puebla, Mexico, organized and directed by Gerardo Luzuriaga.

The year got off to a great start with the international conference "De Nuevo el 98," organized by Jesús Torrecilla, which brought together some of the world's leading specialists on the Spanish Generation of '98. Another international conference, organized by Adriana Bergero and José Monleón in April, focused on "Transnationalism: Perspectives from Spain, Latin America, and the United States." We have also been privileged to enjoy the company of Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo, who spent two weeks in the Department as a Regents' Lecturer, and of Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who will deliver the Humanities commencement address and receive the prestigious UCLA Medal on June 19 (see items in this newsletter on their respective visits). Thanks to Jesús Torrecilla and Efraín Kristal for their initiative and effort in making these visits possible.

Have a great summer!

Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most important and prolific literary figures in the world today, will be awarded the UCLA Medal, our University's highest honor. In connection with this award he has been invited to give an address at the Humanities Commencement on June 19.

Best known in the United States as a major novelist who ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990, he is also a renowned essayist, an electrifying lecturer, a splendid critic of literature, art and film, a playwright, and an engaging commentator of contemporary events. He has won many prizes for his literary accomplishments, including the prestigious Cervantes Prize in Spain, the "Ordre des Arts et des Lettres" in France, and the National Book Critics Award in the United States. His uncompromising defense of individual freedom has earned him equally prestigious recognition with the Jerusalem Prize and the Frankfurt Peace Prize. Vargas Llosa's many literary accomplishments include Conversation in the Cathedral, the most ambitious exploration of Latin American urban life, and his masterpiece, The War of the End of the World, one of the towering achievements of Latin American fiction.

UCLA's Department of Spanish and Portuguese has played an important role in the reception of Vargas Llosa's literary works. Two of the most significant books on Vargas Llosa have been written by UCLA faculty: Mario Vargas Llosa: la invención de una realidad by José Miguel Oviedo, who taught at UCLA in the 1980s, and Temptation of the Word: The Novels of Mario Vargas Llosa, by Efraín Kristal, who is currently on our faculty. A special issue of Mester, the departmentís graduate student journal, was devoted to Vargas Llosa's work, and Professor John Skirius has included Vargas Llosa in his influential anthology of major Latin American essayists.

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese is organizing two events on June 18 in connection with Vargas Llosa's visit. The first will be a roundtable discussion by specialists on his work, including José Miguel Oviedo from the University of Pennsylvania, Roy Boland from La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, historian and literary critic Fernando Iwasaki from Seville, and John Skirius from our department. That afternoon Vargas Llosa will offer a bilingual reading of excerpts from his literary work, followed by a question and answer period with the audience.

Juan Goytisolo

The prestigious Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo visited UCLA's Department of Spanish and Portuguese from March 1-13 as a Regentsí Lecturer. He presented two lectures, "The Fourth Centennial of La Celestina" and "Sarmiento's Travels: Spain, Algeria and La Pampa," while also participating in two roundtable discussions, one on his own literary production, and the other on "Cultures in Contact: Conflict or Enrichment?"

Goytisolo has been one of the most important figures in Spanish literature and culture for the last thirty years. At the same time, he is very critical of the Spanish cultural and literary establishment. A constant defender of oppressed and marginalized groups, he is both a very respected and polemical figure. Among his best known novels and books of essays are El furgón de cola (1967), Señas de identidad (1966), Reivindicación del Conde don Julián (1970), and Juan sin tierra (1975), as well as his autobiography Coto vedado (1985).

In the last thirty years he has lived in voluntary exile from Spain, mostly in Paris and Marrakesh, Morocco. He is one of the strongest defenders of Muslim culture and civilization in Europe, and he has written various essays and books extolling the contributions of Muslim culture to European civilization. He has traveled extensively and has published several books of his impressions. Some of his travels have been politically motivated, such as those to Algeria, Chechnya, and Sarajevo, where he collaborated with Susan Sontag. In 1992 he received the European Community Prize (which is awarded once every two years) for Most Distinguished European Writer.

His confessional style and his honesty in the treatment of even the most controversial themes, as well as his heterodoxy and his courage to denounce the excesses of Spanish culture, have made him one of the most respected and controversial voices in contemporary Spain.

Cinema Novo and Beyond

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese was a major sponsor of the UCLA Film and Television Archiveís series Cinema Novo & Beyond, which ran from February 11 until March 21. The series included twenty-four feature films produced since 1960 as well as a number of short films. It was part of a film tour organized by Jytte Jensen of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. Randal Johnson, who participated in the selection of the films, wrote the following text for the series program:

"As we near the end of the century, Brazilian cinema is reemerging in full force, both at home and internationally, after experiencing a severe downturn in the early í90s. Production has recaptured the rhythm of the í80s, with a remarkable diversity of themes and styles. Brazil is once again a regular presence at international film festivals, attaining impressive levels of success. Brazilian films have been nominated for Academy Awards in the foreign-language film category in two of the last three years, and Walter Salles Jr.ís Central Station, received awards for Best Film and Best Actress at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival.

The Archiveís retrospective of Brazilian films from the í60s to the present thus comes at the right moment, for the "new beginning" of Brazilian cinema provides an opportunity to look back at another new beginning, one that put Brazilian cinema on the international cinematic map for the first time in its history: the Cinema Novo movement, which introduced such creative filmmakers as Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Carlos Diegues, Glauber Rocha and Nelson Pereira dos Santos to audiences across the globe. Playing a catalytic role much like that of the modernist movement of the í20s in Brazilian literature, art and music, it is no overstatement to suggest that Cinema Novo represents thebirth of modern cinema in Brazil.

Cinema Novo & Beyond provides an opportunity to revisit some of the most important Brazilian films of the last 40 years as well as to get a taste of more recent productions, including work by a new generation of directors who have charted promising new paths for Brazilian cinema and are well on their way to international recognition in their own right."

The series was also co-sponsored by International Studies and Overseas Programs (ISOP) and the UCLA Latin American Center.

Recent Events

January 29: Guadalupe Valdés from Stanford University met with faculty to discuss the departmentís proposal to expand its course offerings for heritage speakers. That afternoon Professor Valdés delivered a campus-wide lecture entitled "The Problem of the Underdeveloped Code in Bilingual Repertoires: Pedagogical Implications." The lecture was co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Language Resource Center.

February 26: Joseph Schraibman of Washington University in St. Louis lectured on "Women in the Spanish Inquisition."

March 10: Noé Jitrik, Director of the Instituto de Literatura Argentina y Estudios Culturales of the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires and member of El Colegio de México, lectured on "Entre Borges y Eco."

April 6 and 7: Former UCLA Professor José Pascual Buxó of the Universidad Autónoma de México lectured and conducted a workshop on the study of colonial Mexican texts.

April 23: The Departmentís Third Annual Sant Jordi Celebration and Catalan Colloquium was held in the Lydeen Reading Room. Speakers included Enrique Rodríguez-Cepeda ("Notas sobre la vida y obra de Joan Amades"), Sylvia Sherno ("Crimes of Poetry in Pere Gimferrerís ëLa muerte en Beverly Hillsí"), C. Brian Morris ("Catalonia in Surrealism and Surrealism in Catalonia"), José Cruz-Salvadores ("Picasso: Orígenes catalanes del cubismo"), and Paul Smith ("Gaudí: The Spirit of Barcelona"). The event was organized by Montserrat Reguant and John Dagenais.

May 6-8: Adriana Bergero and José Monleón, along with Raymond Rocco of UCLAís Department of Sociology, organized a symposium on "Transnationalism: Perspectives from Spain, Latin America, and the U.S." The symposium grew out of a previous conference, "Postmodernismís Challenge to the Social Sciences and the Humanities," which was held in Madrid, Spain, in April 1997. It is the second project to emerge from collaborative efforts between the University of California and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid to develop stronger ties between the institutions, to promote faculty and student exchange, and to pursue joint research projects of common interest.

May 14: For the Department's annual Mathews Lecture, Professor Nelson Vieira presented a lecture entitled "Ways of Being Jewish in Brazil: The Cultural Politics of Identity in Brazilian-Jewish Fiction." In his lecture he addressed the question, "How to be Jewish in a country like Brazil which professes liberal humanism yet manifests, toward racial and ethnic others, especially non-European or those mistaken to be non-European, an ambiguous modern history of chronic but subtle prejudice?"

May 19: Visiting Professor John Kronik lectured on "Crossing the Great Divide: Borders and Barriers between Spain and Spanish America." In the Winter and Spring quarters, Professor Kronik offered courses on Spanish vanguard theater, Hispanic metafiction, and modern Spanish narrative.

June 4: Visiting scholar María Teresa Zubiaurre, of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, presented a lecture entitled "De identidades, olvidos y mixtificaciones: Feminismo y 98."

Faculty, Student, and Alumni News

FACULTY

At the triennial meeting of the Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas last July in Madrid, Carroll B. Johnson presented a paper entitled "Cervantes, coyote?" in which he introduced European colleagues to our local MEXUS meaning of that zoological term. He gave three invited lectures during November: "Christians and Muslims, Women and Men in the Captive's Story (Don Quijote I), 37-42" at Georgetown University, "Feudalism, Capitalism and the Drama of Sancho's Salary (Don Quijote II)," at Boston University, and "Ideological Antagonism and International Commerce in Cervantes' El amante liberal," at Harvard University. He published an article on Calderón, "Social Roles and Ideology, Dramatic Roles and Theatrical Convention in El gran teatro del mundo," Bulletin of the Comediantes 49.2 (Winter 1997), and co-edited, with Anne J. Cruz, a volume entitled Cervantes and His Postmodern Constituencies, Hispanic Issues, No. 17 (New York: Garland, 1999). He even found time to write the introduction to the volume.

Randal Johnson gave a lecture entitled "Arriving at Central Station" at the 100 Years of Latin American Cinema conference, held on April 23 at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His article "Documentary Discourses and National Identity: Humberto Mauro's Brasiliana Series and Linduarte Noronha's Aruanda" appeared in Nuevo Texto Crítico 21/22 (1998), and "Brazilian Modernism: An Idea out of Place?" came out in Modernism and its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America, edited by A.L. Geist and J.B. Monleón for Garland Publishing (1999).

In July, The University Press of Florida will release Elizabeth Marchant's Critical Acts: Latin American Women and Literary Criticism, an examination of the writing of three important women intellectuals of the early 20th century: Lúcia Miguel Pereira (Brazil), Victoria Ocampo (Argentina), and Gabriela Mistral (Chile). Looking at the broad contexts in which the three authors wrote, the book explores their views on race, culture, gender, and national identity, bringing into focus women's impact on the writing of the history of ideas in Latin America as well as their traditional influence as writers on personal themes.

In January, Susan Plann presented a paper on "Spanish Deaf History as Minority History" at the American Historical Association in Washington, D.C. Her article, "Francisco Goya y Lucientes and Roberto Pradez y Gautier: The Role of Deafness in the Lives of Two Spanish Artists," appeared in Das Zeichen (journal of the University of Hamburg) and her book, A Silent Minority: Deaf Education in Spain, was reviewed in Language and in La Revista de los Libros.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

In February, Michael Hammer presented a paper entitled "Sancho Panza as Intruder in the Discourse of the Hunt" at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies conference, and he spoke on "Of a Hound, a Hawk, and a Horse: Desire and Excess in the Libro del Caballero Zifar" at the Cultural Borders symposium at UC Riverside.

José Rosbel López-Morín completed the Los Angeles Marathon in just 4 hours, 17 minutes, and 14 seconds!

Alvaro Molina presented the following papers at scholarly conferences: "Uses of Fortuna in Tirant lo Blanc," The Medieval and Early Modern Student Organization of the Pacific (MEMSOP 98), University of Washington, 23-24 October 1998; "Manly Virtue in Ruiz de Alarcón's Las Paredes Oyen: A Machiavellian Reading," PAMLA, 6-8 November 1998, Scripps College; "Reglas y Quimeras: La Poética Horaciana en El Coloquio de los Perros," Coloquio Internacional sobre Cervantes en Andalucía, 3-5 December 1998, Estepa, Sevilla; "Models of Desire in Lope de Vega's El Perro del Hortelano," Louisiana Conference on Hispanic Languages and Literatures, 25-27 February 1999.

Mehl Penrose presented the paper "Una moneda, dos caras: la convergencia socio-historica del Madrid galdosiano y del Paris balzaciano" at the BRICHA conference, held on April 8-10 in North Carolina.

During January and February, Marcela Redoles exhibited her art work "Un Poema para Chile" at the Northern Lights coffee shop.

Olivia Treviño contributed three entries to Latin American Literature and Its Times, which is scheduled for Summer 1999 publication by Gale Research. The entries deal with Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, the short stories of Horacio Quiroga, and Aluisio Azevedo's O Cortiço. She gave a paper titled "Folkloric Cantigas de Roda and their Social and Cultural Function in Brazil" at the 22^nd Symposium on Portuguese Traditions, April 16-17, here at UCLA.

Eloy Urroz filed his dissertation "La silenciosa herejía: forma y contrautopía en las novelas de Jorge Volpi" in the Spring and has accepted an assistant professorship at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado. His most recent book, Las formas de la inteligencia amorosa: D.H. Lawrence y James Joyce, has been published by the Secretaría de Cultura del Estado de Puebla.

María José Zubieta presented a paper entitled "Desmantelamiento y desmitificación de la 'Suiza de América' en 'El derrumbamiento' de Armonía Somers" at the "Coloquio Internacional: Género, raza y clase en la cultura latinoamericana y caribeña," February 15-19, in Havana, Cuba.

ALUMNI

Jean Graham-Jones (Ph.D., 1993) was promoted and tenured in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at Florida State University, in Tallahassee, Florida.

José Luiz Passos (Ph.D., 1998) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley. Recent publications include his book Ruínas de Linhas Puras: Quatro Ensaios em Torno a Macunaíma (São Paulo: Annablume, 1998) and a review of Ricardo Bezaquen de Araújoís Casa-Grande e Senzala e a Obra de Gilberto Freyre nos anos 30, which appeared in the Luso-Brazilian Review (35:1, 1998). His short story "Nova continuidade dos parques" was published in Lucero: A Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies (IX, 1998). He has also given a number of lectures: "Dom Casmurro Faz 100 Anos: Influência e Dissímulo em Machado de Assis" (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil, 8 January 1999); "Nativismo, Utopia e Morte em Darcy Ribeiro e Antônio Callado" (Conference on Luso-Afro-Brazilian Literatures of the 20th Century, York University, Toronto, 26 March 1999); "Machado de Assisí Library: Drama and Deception in the Rise of Brazilian Realism" (Morrison Library Inaugural Lecture Series, University of California, Berkeley, 31 March 1999); and "Literature and Ethical Value in Machado de Assis" (23rd Annual Portuguese-American Education Conference, San José State University, 17 April 1999).

Silvia Pellarolo (Ph.D., 1994), who has been an assistant professor at California State University, Chico, for the past four years, has accepted a position in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at California State University, Northridge. During the Spring semester she was a visiting professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Berkeley.

Michael Schuessler (Ph.D., 1996) has received a Mellon post-doctoral fellowship to teach at the University of Southern California for the 1999-2000 academic year.

Norma Vega (Ph.D., 1998) has accepted a tenure track position at California State University, San Jose.