DIBS chatted with Spanish, English and World Languages Associate Professor William Keeth of Mansfield University of Pennsylvania whose special interests include Latin American Avant-garde Poetry; 20th Century Latin American Literature with emphasis in Peruvian and Mexican Literature; the interdisciplinary Study of Latin American Literature and Art; web and e-collaboration/integration; computer-enhanced teaching; and distance learning.
He has worked at Mansfield University since 2001.
Introduce yourself - who are you, where are you from and what do you do?
I was born in Tucson, AZ, where I began to study Spanish in Junior High. In the late 70s, Spanish was just a curiosity for me, but remained a hobby throughout my early education. No one spoke the language at home. In a sense, Art and Spanish represented my personal creative and intellectual space. Looking back, I now feel both nostalgic and sad—sad, because of I am aware of the current anti-Hispanic politics in AZ and know that young people today won’t necessarily get the same opportunity that I had. One experimental Jr. High Spanish class effectively changed my life. At Whittier College, I made a switch from studying engineering to studying Spanish in my sophomore year. And, again, after graduating, I shifted from joining the Peace Corps to registering for a Spanish graduate program at Arizona State University. Graduate school brings on another twinge of melancholy, too. I never could never have gone to college without my student aid and could never have finished graduate school without my teaching assistantship. Today, this type of scholarship is disappearing. This is truly unfortunate.
Why did you decide to become a Spanish Professor, and what is it about Latin America that drew you to become a master in the subject?
Although I began my undergraduate and graduate studies based purely on my academic interests, my experience teaching English to immigrants in California and my part-time work at Chandler Community College made me realize that all employment had a practical side to it. I decided to enter and finish the Spanish Literature PhD program at ASU, because I saw more job opportunities with a PhD than with simply a M.A. Essentially, I didn’t want to limit my teaching opportunities to the community college level and saw more opportunities to travel abroad as a university professor. As for my academic focus, that was a tough decision. I enjoyed both Peninsular and Latin American Literature. I guess what tipped the scales were the relationships I made with my professors at ASU. In both areas of study, I had researched the interdisciplinary relationships shared by many poets and artists. For me, studying the Peruvian surrealist poets was as interesting as studying the correspondence and inter-artistic sharing of Diego Velázquez and Pedro Calderón de la Barca.
Have you spent time in Latin America and if so where?
Yes, I have been very fortunate to be able to travel and live in Latin America. I made my first trip to Morelia, Mexico as a winter exchange student at Whittier College. My host family was extraordinarily helpful and caring. In graduate school, I returned to Mexico and studied for a semester at La Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. And, after receiving my PhD returned once more to Latin America. This time I took graduate courses in Quechuan linguistics. As an exchange student I have, for example, been able to learn business from a Mexican professor who earned the Key to the City in El Paso, TX and been able to live alongside Mexican students immersed in Spanish in a Casa de asistencia. Truth is, I haven’t stopped traveling abroad. Each year I try to return to Peru and continue my research. This has been very rewarding. I have, for example, met poets like the late Javier Sologuren and artists like the late Fernando de Szyszlo.
Why should people learn about the history, culture, and literature of Latin America?
Well, first, I could say that we need to learn about the cultures from which many of the U.S Latinos come from and that we could better prepare ourselves by understanding our own culture better. But, this would be too obvious. The most successful formula for teaching culture that I have used has been helping students recognize the main cultural paradoxes of Latin America and then reflecting on their own culture. Frequently, more than one nation grapples with the same quintessential socioeconomic or ethical problems throughout history. As for literature, I like to stress the unique beauty, sensibility, and ways of thinking that embody Latin American literary writing. Literature can seem scary until you can read and begin to understand it. Jorge Borges wasn’t wrong. Don Quijote is an entirely different book in English. Being able to read in another language is like learning to swim and swimming is not walking although you can travel at the same speed.
Could you talk about the different types of people that settled in Latin America? And the idea that Latino is not a "uniform race."
A Peruvian taxicab driver asked me one day, “Where are you from?”; but, before I could answer, my Peruvian wife explained to him that I was from the provinces. I wanted to laugh, because I could never imagine that he would believe her. But, he did. Racial mixing and the use of foreign names like William is common in Peru. In fact, the country has a tremendous Afro-Peruvian history, has opened its doors to Chinese immigrants like the U.S. (before the trains reached California), and even has had to remove a president-turned-dictator, who was of Japanese descendent. Indeed, contemporary Latin America is multicultural and multiracial. Like the U.S., however, this doesn’t mean it’s uniformly recognized or accepted. In some areas, one can still find racial discrimination, many times against the indigenous people.
Could you describe Latin American culture, history, and literature in 3 words?
Syncretism, Economic dependency, Resistance.
What are some groundbreaking authors of Latin America? What themes do they talk about?
That’s a tough question. There are so many literary periods and groundbreaking works in each one of them. Regardless, I can’t imagine not having read something by Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Isabel Allende, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz. Recently, however, I’ve been reading works by Roberto Bolaño, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Daniel Alarcón, and Jorge Volpi. These more contemporary authors don’t shy away from themes like serial killers, computerized realities, terrorism, and drug smuggling. Like the more classical authors I mentioned, they, too, envelope you in their literary worlds and flesh out the underlying human realities. They leave you thinking about humanity and human purpose, despite its sometimes-terrifying forms.
How important do you think it is for Americans to learn Spanish?
In general, learning a second language is important, whether this is Spanish or not. Learning a second language allows you to explore other cultural histories/realities. You learn different ways of seeing the world and can use the language to discover different parts of the world itself. You also find different ways of expressing and understanding yourself.
As for learning Spanish as an American, this, too, is very important. Just in practical terms, we need to recognize that a huge segment of the U.S. either speaks Spanish or comes from a Hispanic background. Intellectually speaking, however, the importance of learning Spanish in the U.S. was established almost as our nation was founded. It was recognized by one of the first American academics, the Bostonian erudite, George Ticknor (1791-1871). He travelled in Europe extensively and wrote significant works about Spanish Literature. Ironically, I recall reading his journal entries in Mexico, as they are translated and circulated in Spanish. He’s been followed by other great American academics like Jerimiah D. M. Ford (1873–1958), great art dealers like Julien Levy (1906-1981), great photographers like Alfred Stieglitz (1864 –1946) and Ansel Adams (1902-1984) with their ties to Mexican Muralism, great philanthropists like Ruth Walgreen Stephan (1910-1974) and her connections to Latin American poetry, and even explorers like Hiram Bingham (Machu Picchu). As one can see, the scope of American artistic and intellectual ties to Spanish speaking countries has long since learned to embrace all the Spanish speaking world, including Latin America and our own Spanish speaking Southwest.
Unfortunately, learning/speaking Spanish almost always gets tied up in politics, and not just the recent politics of immigration. Learning/speaking Spanish is embroiled in our geopolitical discourse of globalization (along with Chinese and Arabic). And, the truth is: it has always been interwoven in the lengthy American Hispanicist debate framed by the Spanish Cession of Florida, the Mexican American War, the Spanish-American war, the Bay of Pigs, and the Civil Rights Movement (César Chávez). This politicization tends to confuse the purpose for learning a second language (the creative, cultural, and intellectual connections/contributions developed through language proficiency) with cultural threat.
Is there a moment or moments in Latin American history that North America could learn from?
We all are busy and tend to be wrapped up in our own daily troubles. Regardless, I’d like to think that we can learn from history and become more conscientious about our participation in our socio-political world—become more prepared for the crucial crises that our communities face and more prepared to guide and empower our children as they help construct our future. In this sense, we, indeed can learn a lot from Latin American history. The fundamental questions in any introductory course on Latin American Civilization are: what happened during their colonization, their independence, and their early national formation?, how are they different?, and how did they address similar problems like racism, universal suffrage, public education, and technological advancement? These questions reveal common problems facing humanity and we begin to see the paradoxes hidden in their and our own solutions. For instance, we can learn how a caudillo is created and empowered in a democracy, how the common person suffers under colonialism, how wars can be created through international intervention and commercial monopolization, and how the boom-bust cycles of globalization can desecrate both land and people. These lessons can help us have more foresight, a deeper understanding of human issues, and hopefully advocate for a better solution to humanity’s problems in our own social context as we are asked to respond to the same problems.
Lastly, most importantly, talk about the cuisine that is culturally from there and maybe some influences.
Mexico and Peru have two different words for the chili: chile and ají. Like these words, the many Latin American chilis themselves are very different, even though some share shape and color. If I were a newbie cook with no books, no travels, and no tasty memories, I’d be at a loss for quite sometime trying to figure out how to use them tastily. My dishes would be as exaggerated as those people that expect all Latin American food to be hot and spicy like Mexican dishes often are. Most Latin American food, however, has been shaped locally and via some shared historical and cultural current. Some of these currents are of Pre-Columbian origin, some of Spanish origin, some of African origin, some of Chinese and Japanese origin, and some have roots that go as far back as the Arab occupation of Spain. The history of the Peruvian dish, Ají de gallina, is a good example of this last gastronomic route. Having tasted so many wonderful Latin American dishes, it doesn’t surprise me that many of the worlds best chefs can be found in Latin America. The first Peruvian chefs that come to mind are Virgilio Martinez or Gastón Acurio. I know that currently there is a three-month-long reservation list for places like Maido in Lima (nikkei food at its best). I guess “food-fusion over time” would best explain many of the most popular dishes throughout Latin America. In my opinion, even common dishes in Mexico City and in Río de Janeiro are very tasty: la torta ahogada or the feijoada, for example.