Guest Speaker: Adolfo Castañón

The Mexican poet, essayist, editor, translator, and critic Adolfo Castañón will be joining a Spanish & Portuguese graduate seminar taught by Maarten van Delden as a guest speaker. The session will take place via ZOOM on Tuesday, October 10, from 3:00 – 5:50 pm PST (4:00 – 6:50 pm Mexico City time) with a 15-minute break scheduled at 4:15 pm PST (5:15 pm Mexico City time).

Prof. van Delden will be opening the class to members of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA and others who would like to attend. Please email him at mvandelden@humnet.ucla.edu if you are interested and he will provide you with the ZOOM link as well as two readings the guest speaker has asked students to read before the class. The readings are the following poems by Paz: “Nocturno de San Ildefonso” and Pasado en claro.

Please feel free to attend the first half of the class or stay for the entire session, which will be conducted in Spanish.   

Adolfo Castañón is a member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua and the 2020 recipient of the Premio Nacional de Artes y Literatura, among other awards. He is the author and editor of dozens of books and collections and is especially well known for his numerous studies of the works of Alfonso Reyes and Octavio Paz, with whom he collaborated on many projects. His publications on Paz include Tránsito de Octavio Paz (Poemas, apuntes, ensayos) (México: El Colegio de México, 2014), Trinidad profana: Octavio Paz, Efraín Huerta, José Revueltas (México: Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2016), and, as editor, Cartas cruzadas: Octavio Paz, Arnaldo Orfila (México: Siglo XXI, 2005). Adolfo Castañón served for many years as the Editor in Chief of Mexico’s premier publishing house, Fondo de Cultura Económica.