Mabel Moraña, Ph.D., professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and professor of International and Area Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, has been named the inaugural holder of the William H. Gass Professorship in Arts & Sciences, announced Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., executive vice chancellor, dean of Arts & Sciences and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences.
A formal installation ceremony will be held early in the spring semester.
Highly regarded in both the Americas and Europe for her scholarship, Moraña specializes in Latin American colonial literature and culture, Latin American cultural criticism and Hispanism and Latin Americanism as academic and political fields. Much of her work is interdisciplinary, focusing on topics such as Latin American cultural criticism and cultural studies, nation and modernity and women’s writing.
“Professor Moraña’s teaching draws praise from undergraduate and graduate students alike, who cite her commitment to students, her accessibility outside the classroom, and her clear mastery of the subject material,” Macias said. “She is also known as an outstanding mentor to graduate students and junior faculty, having directed numerous dissertations resulting in a superb record of tenure track placements.”
Moraña earned a bachelor’s degree from the Instituto Dámaso A. Larrañaga in Montevideo, Uruguay. She also completed the degrees of Professor of Literature and Professor of Philosophy at the Instituto de Profesores Artigas. She earned a master’s degree from the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, and a doctorate degree in Hispanic literature from the University of Minnesota.
She joined WUSTL this fall from the University of Pittsburgh, where she had served as chair of the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures since 1996.
Prior to working at Pittsburgh, Moraña held faculty positions at the universities of Washington and Southern California. She has also held visiting professorships at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Harvard University, Andean University in Ecuador, Universidad de los Andes in Columbia and Universidad Autonóma de México.
Moraña is frequently invited to deliver lectures and papers, having visited more than 50 educational institutions and organizations domestically and overseas. She has authored, co-authored or edited 19 books and more than 50 book chapters and journal articles. For the past nine years she has served as director of publications for Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana, which produces four annual issues of Revista Iberoamericana and five series of books on Latin American literary and cultural studies.
William H. Gass, Ph.D., the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at WUSTL, taught for 30 years in the Department of Philosophy in Arts & Sciences.
He is the author of three novels, two story collections, and several works of collected essays.
His many distinguished honors include three National Book Critics Circle awards, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and the first PEN/Nabokov Award honoring writers of “enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship.”
He was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1982 and to the Institute of Arts & Letters in 1983.
Gass founded the International Writers Center at Washington University in 1990. Its purpose was to “build on the strengths of its resident and visiting faculty writers; to serve as a focal point for writing excellence in all disciplines and in all cultures; to be a directory for writers and writing programs at Washington University, in St. Louis, in the United States, and around the world; and to present the writer to the reader.”
The highly successful International Writers Center is now The Center for the Humanities.