Distinguished Alumni Lecture 2009
Text by Arno Argueta
Photos by Cassandra Tesch
On November 5th and 6th, 2009, the UCLA Department of Spanish & Portuguese presented Michael Gerli as the 2009 Distinguished Alumni. Started in 1998 and continued thanks to the generous contribution made by Shirley Aurora, the recognition is bestowed annually to department alumni who have demonstrated exceptional academic achievements in the field of Luso-Hispanic literature and linguistics.
Professor Gerli was treated to a welcome dinner reception on Thursday, November 5th in which his longtime personal friend and colleague, Professor John Dagenais, introduced him as the, “friendly, generous and open person we all know.” Among the attendees were Gonzalo Navajas, Harvey Sharrer, Sherry Velasco, Mary Coffey, Gloria Galvez-Carlisle and previous Distinguished Alumna Roberta Johnson in addition to department faculty, students, staff and other alumni.
The following day Professor Gerli presented a lecture on Americo Castro (1885-1972), a controversial historian who taught extensively at Universidad de Madrid and Princeton University. Professor Gerli synthesized Americo Castro’s perspective as one that proposes, “that Spaniards got ipseidad (oneness, identity) through the creation of different casts after the reconquista... [it was the] result of a need for convivencia …coexistence based on a mutual self-interest.” Stressing Castro’s ideals as “maybe the first cultural historian” and “an escape from historical canonicity,” he ended his speech with the assertion that “history remains an art and not a science.”
After receiving both his B.A. and Ph.D. from UCLA in 1968 and 1972, Professor Gerli went on to become one of the most renowned scholars in the field of Medieval Iberian literature. His book Reading, Writing and Rewriting in Cervantes (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995) was chosen as an “Outstanding Academic Book” by the American Association of College and University Libraries in 1996. He also edited Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2003). This year, Dr. Gerli will be publishing a new book, Celestina and the Ends of Desire, which he describes as “an attempt to understand the transformation, the goals and the ends of desire.”
Professor Gerli is currently at the University of Virginia but was previously at Georgetown University where he served as chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for twelve years.
In his remarks on Friday, November 6th, Dr. Gerli reminisced about his years at UCLA, which to him, is the institution “which gave me the foundations to appreciate literature in a great time for this department.” Dr. Gerli continues to describe the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese as “vox clamatix in deserto” (voice clamoring in the desert)—an institution that engaged “hispanismo from a new perspective: Americo Castro’s perspective.”
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