In Memoriam: Maureen Ahern (1936–2012)

The sudden death of Maureen Ahern has left us with the difficult task of accepting the absence of a rigorous colleague, a sensitive, erudite and intelligent teacher, an exceptionally honest professional, an insightful and original critic, a loyal friend, and a warm, passionate, and resilient individual who made great contributions to the field of Latin American Studies but, above all, who left her mark on the lives and careers of many colleagues and students who had the privilege of interacting with her during her long and productive career. A faculty member at Ohio State University, where she worked for many years as a professor of Latin American literature in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Maureen Ahern was a specialist in colonial cultures and literatures of Mexico and Peru. She studied not only the literary works of Hispanic authors but also the production of indigenous groups, Jesuit discourses, Quechua poetry, and religious communities. In addition, she wrote about more contemporary topics such as Latin American women writers, as well as on indigenista authors such as Rosario Castellanos. In her primary field of colonial literatures, Maureen Ahern was particularly interested in the specificities of border cultures, ethnic and linguistic interactions, the literary representations of nature, the relevance of visual discourses, and the symbolic value of cultural practices. She combined her research with administrative duties, and with her work as an editor and as a translator. But above all, Maureen was a passionate and curious intellectual and a demanding teacher who opened many new avenues for the dissemination of knowledge about Latin America and for the consolidation of areas of study in which her work already is an indispensable point of reference. As homage to her memory, we have invited some colleagues and students to offer a few words that evoke Maureen’s life, in some of its many rich personal and professional facets. Generous of spirit, kind of heart, and brilliant of mind we catch a glimpse of her extraordinary talents from these pages. Much more could have been said, and many more people could have spoken. We hope only that these reflections, captured in print, will help all of the many of us who knew her to remember and contemplate a life well-lived and a career that stands as an inspiration to us all.

Stephanie Kirk and Mabel Moraña
Washington University in St. Louis

When I accepted the invitation to write a few words about Maureen Ahern, I didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be. After all, I knew I could talk for hours about Maureen, who was such an influential figure in my professional career, as a senior colleague, a mentor, and a dearest friend. But now every word I type seems empty, vacuous, unbearably rhetorical and incapable of conveying the meaning—that is, ultimately the feelings—that a relationship that lasted for more than twenty years left on me. In inscrutable ways, the other becomes part of our self.

Maureen was a rigorous scholar, extraordinary teacher, and generous intellectual who deeply loved Latin American peoples, literatures and cultures, and especially, very especially, the indigenous cultures. Over the last twenty plus years at Ohio State University, she was crucial in the development of the program in Latin American Cultures and Literatures in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and an indefatigable champion of the Center for Latin American Studies. As a New Englander of Irish descent, an early feminist who raised three children by herself, and a pioneer in Latin American Women’s Studies and the renewal of Colonial Studies, Maureen was a fierce practitioner of the pedagogic virtues of tough love and the inevitability of political struggle. Raised in the austerity of a farm family and formed in the intellectually exciting Lima of the early 1960s, she became a fighter—a tenacious fighter—and a formidable adversary that would never give up. This didn’t earn her the love of many, of course, but did earn her everybody’s respect.

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