Roberto Gonzalez-Echevarria

Sterling Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literatures

Ph.D. Yale University (1970)

Areas of interest: Latin American literature, Colonial Spanish American literature, Spanish Golden Age literature, Comparative literature

Among other works, he is the author of: Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home (1977, 1990); The Voice of the Masters: Writing and Authority in Modern Latin American Literature (1985); Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative (1990, 1998); Celestina’s Brood: Continuities of the Baroque in Spanish and Latin American Literatures (1993); The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (1999), and Critica practica, practica critica (2002). His Myth and Archive won the 1989-90 MLA’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize and the Latin American Studies Association’s 1992 Bryce Wood Book Award, and The Pride of Havana received the Dave Moore Award for the Best Baseball Book of 2002. His Love and the Law in Cervantes (2005) had its origin in his 2002 DeVane Lectures at Yale.

He is the editor of The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories (1997), a CD Rom on Cervantes (Primary Sources Media, 1998), Don Quixote: A Case Book (Oxford, 2005), and Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana (Cambridge University) (Gredos, 2006). He co-edited The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature (1996) as well as Cuba: un siglo de literatura (1902-2002) (2004).

Translations of his works include: La prole de Celestina: continuidades del barroco en las literaturas espanola e hispanoamericana (1999), Mito y archivo: una teoria de la narrativa latinoamericana (2000), La voz de los maestros: escritura y autoridad de la literatura latinoamericana moderna (2001), Alejo Carpentier: el peregrino en su patria (1993; 2nd. ed. corregida y aumentada, 2004), La gloria de Cuba: historia del beisbol en la isla (2004), and the forthcoming El amor y el derecho en Cervantes (Gredos) as well as, in Polish, The Pilgrim at Home. His Cartas de Carpentier (Verbum) and Oye mi son: ensayos y testimonios sobre literatura latinoamericana (Renacimiento) are in press.

An international symposium was held in his honor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Arecibo (2002) and an issue (no. 33, 2004) of Encuentro de la cultura cubana was published in his honor. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the National Humanities Medal from President Barak Obama, at the White House, in March 2011. And also, his latest book is “Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction,” Oxford University Press, 2012.