RLL would like to congratulate Professor Cristina Moreiras-Menor who has been named as an LSA Collegiate Professor. The appointment was approved by the Regents at their July meeting.
The LSA Collegiate Professorship is the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts’ (LSA) highest faculty honor. It is awarded to those who demonstrate a sustained record of excellence in research and scholarship, teaching, service, and other contributions to the university. Created in 1973, LSA holds 71 collegiate professorships which are allocated by the university to the schools and colleges.
Traditionally, Collegiate Professors name their professorship after a person of distinction in their field. Moreiras-Menor selected Kathleen M. Canning and her official title is the Kathleen M. Canning Collegiate Professor of Spanish and Women’s and Gender Studies.
Kathleen M. Canning was a distinguished professor of modern German and European history, gender history, and histories of citizenship and political subjectivity, from 1988 until her retirement in 2018. Collegiate professorships are one of the highest honors the college and the university can bestow upon an eminent member of the faculty and recognize exceptional scholarly achievement and impact on advancing knowledge in science, engineering, heath, education, the arts, and the humanities.
In his nomination letter, Alex Herrero-Olaizola, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Spanish, wrote, "Professor Moreiras-Menor has achieved great international distinction and has established herself as one of the very top specialists, a leading presence and influence, in the field of modern and contemporary Iberian studies. She is highly respected in the profession for the breadth and depth of the intellectual acumen she brings to the field. High quality productivity, originality and innovation are the characteristics that have taken her to a privileged position among Spanish studies scholars in the United States and Europe. Professor Moreiras-Menor is an effective leader, one who has managed to exercise positive influence on the internal culture and everyday management of our department with tangible results."
Moreiras-Menor is an internationally renowned scholar of nineteenth to twenty-first century Iberian Studies, with special emphasis in literature, film, the critical traditions of feminism and psychoanalysis, and Galician Studies. Professor Moreiras-Menor’s publications explore three distinct yet profoundly interrelated areas of modern/postmodern Spanish cultural history: (1) the origins, aesthetics and politics of the Spanish civil war; (2) culture and state formation during the Franco regime and their relation to contemporary cultural and institutional configurations; (3) the longstanding relation between the ideological construction of national culture (from the nineteenth century to the present) in relation to the claims, realities and aesthetics of regional, marginal or peripheral nations on the Iberian Peninsula.
Moreiras-Menor arrived at U-M in 2002. She currently holds faculty appointments in RLL and Women’s and Gender Studies. Moreiras-Menor has also served in a number of administrative roles, including an eight year appointment as RLL’s department chair. She has published two monographic books and several edited books along with numerous articles, book chapters, and reviews. Professor Moreiras-Menor has directed more than twenty-five Ph.D. dissertations in her field, and in 2014 was the recipient of the John D’Arms Faculty Award for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities. Prior to coming to the University of Michigan, Moreiras-Menor was Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Spanish at Yale (1996-2002).
Moreiras-Menor joins Enrique García Santo-Tomas as RLL’s second active Collegiate Professor.
