Gwen Kirkpatrick (U Alabama, BA1971; Princeton U, PhD 1979) is Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University since 2004. Her publications include: Dissonant Legacy of Modernismo, the co-authored Women, Culture and Politics in Latin America, and editions and co-editions on Sarmiento, Lugones, and Guiraldes. Her most recent publications are studies on the contemporary poetry of Carmen Berenguer, Francisco Leal and Lorenzo Helguero; the novels of Diamela Eltit; and nineteenth century literature and culture. In 2008 she was elected president of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana. She has served on editorial boards of Revista Iberoamericana, LARR, Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana, and other journals, and is a contributor to the Handbook of Latin American Studies. At Georgetown and at UC Berkeley, where she taught 1982-2003, she has been an active collaborator in Latin American Studies, as CLAS graduate director and center director, department chair, and most recently teaching in the LAS graduate program at Georgetown. She has received NEH, Fulbright, and UC Humanities Center fellowships and has been a reviewer for fellowship programs of the Ford Foundation, NEH, Fulbright, ACLS, and SSRC. From 1999 to 2001 she resided in Santiago, Chile, as director of the University of California Education Abroad Program. This fall she is also teaching a graduate seminar at the University of Maryland in addition to her teaching duties at Georgetown University.
LASA has long attracted members from several disciplines. This juxtaposition and interaction among the disciplines have produced LASA's astounding growth and vitality in recent years. I see three primary challenges for LASA. One of LASA's challenges is to confront the asymmetry of an organization focused on Latin America, but whose membership resides largely in the United States. Another is to recognize the membership shift among the disciplines, with a much larger percentage now in the humanities. A third is to continue to address the need to include Brazil and the Portuguese language as a central part of LASA's range. LASA's leadership has vigorously addressed the first issue, the asymmetry with Latin America itself, and has attempted to incorporate participants from Latin America in meaningful ways, through collaborative projects, publications, and conference attendance. This is an ongoing challenge. Attention to the dynamics of publishing in both the United States and Latin America is an area that could potentially engage members and potential participants in meaningful dialogue. Additionally, the wave of creation of new doctoral programs in Latin America can be a way to evaluate graduate education throughout the hemisphere. The shift among disciplines within LASA reflects changes within the disciplines themselves, where some fields no longer encourage area specializations. To maintain the vitality of true multidisciplinarity, however, LASA must encourage the widest range of disciplinary participation. LASA has been fairly successful at incorporating recently formed or emergent disciplines, such as U.S. Latino studies or sexuality studies, but less successful in retaining the interest of scholars in, say, agricultural economics or political science. How do we structure an organizational discourse that is inclusive of disciplines that do not share a culturalist language? The third issue is a critical one, for LASA will be much impoverished without the inclusion of scholars focusing primarily or partly on Brazil. LASA should work toward promoting competence in Portuguese as well as Spanish for specialists of Latin America. Such a posture might go a long way in reincorporating Brazilianist scholars within LASA.