Fred P. Ellison and Interamerican Imperatives

In the study of modern languages, the various general and subdisciplines have taken shape over time in different spaces and situations, always in relation to evolving notions of the humanities, area studies, and critical imperatives. Professional clusters organized around national languages and literatures have institutional and personal histories alike. Memory and remembrance are keys to appreciating fully current notions and configurations of teaching missions, the mechanisms of critical inquiry, and diverse articulations with readerships of multiple provenances. Particular MLA forums owe special debts to dedicated and innovative individuals who worked tirelessly over decades to define and fortify both pedagogical practices and research agendas.

In the case of the Luso-Brazilian division, one of the most important figures was Fred P. Ellison. His importance can be gleaned from the title of Earl Fitz’s retrospective state-of-the-art article “On the Shoulders of Giants: The Study of Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian Literature in the United States” in the centerpiece periodical Luso-Brazilian Review, to which Ellison was a frequent contributor. Given the choice of Austin to host the 2016 convention, former students and colleagues had a unique opportunity to consider professional issues Ellison raised and his legacy in the city where he built one of most successful Luso-Brazilian programs in North America. He had completed undergraduate studies in Romance Languages at University of Texas (UT), where he would later restart and diversify a complete and internationally recognized Portuguese program as professor as of 1965. Upon his retirement in 1991, one of his stellar mentees, Randal Johnson (now Distinguished Professor at UCLA) edited Tropical Paths (Dedicated to Fred P. Ellison), a well-deserved Festschrift with several notable segments with quite specific designs. After Ellison’s passing, there were admiring obituaries online (on the websites of his home department and of the Austin American Statesman) and in print (a note in Hispania and a paragraph in the Portuguese Newsletter). Yet more remained to be done in honor of this esteemed figure.

There are several landmarks of the history of Luso-Brazilian Studies associated with Ellison. He published the first university-press monograph on Brazilian fiction, Brazil’s New Novel: Four Northeastern Masters (1954), and he contributed to principal journals in the field for forty years, notably Hispania. In Brazilian Narrative Traditions in a Comparative Context, Earl Fitz notes that Ellison’s pioneer book is “still standard,” and Randal Johnson rightly pointed out that it spawned similar repertory studies in film, song, and regional literature. The wide interest of these topics is plain to see when one maps current interests in teaching and research in Luso-Brazilian programs. Ellison’s trailblazing is truly part of what Irene Rostagno studied in Searching for Recognition: The Promotion of Latin American Literature in the United States. He translated important works of twentieth-century Brazilian fiction and can be situated within the historico-critical parameters of Fitz and Lowe’s Translation and the Rise of Inter-American Literature. As explored in the final segment here, the principal, critical translational projects that Ellison undertook involved fiction of the Northeast, works by both Adonias Filho (experimental mytho-psychological narrative) and Rachel de Queiroz (protofeminist fiction of the Northeast), as well as a collaboration with Naomi Lindstrom on Helena Parente Cunha’s innovative women’s literature. Finally, one may observe an intimate connection with the socially conscious verse of Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna, who was visiting professor at UT at Austin in the 1970s.

In addition to breaking ground in Brazilian literary studies in North America, Ellison was an essential figure in the development of Brazilian Portuguese language instruction. He led the national Portuguese Language Development Group, as well as the team that produced the watershed textbook (with innovative tape recordings) Modern Portuguese: A Project of the Modern Language Association (1971), as elucidated in one of the segments here. Colleagues in the Luso-Brazilian field and friends all appreciate the entirety of this activity as it relates to the growth of the discipline and to relations within the university and beyond, for both narrowly defined and wider readerships.

Numerous people expressed interest in the MLA session...