Víctor Fuentes

Víctor Fuentes (born 1933) is a Spanish-American literary critic, author, and academic, known for his scholarship in Spanish and Latin American literature, film and literature, and Hispanic literary traditions in the United States. He is professor emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a full member of the North American Academy of the Spanish Language, and a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

Early life and education Fuentes was born in Madrid, Spain, and attended the Instituto Cardenal Cisneros before beginning legal studies at the Universidad Central (now Complutense University). In 1954, he left Spain amid political tensions and later emigrated to the United States.

Academic career In the early 1960s, Fuentes taught Spanish at Barnard College, Columbia University, and as an instructor at Middlebury College’s summer program in 1962.

He also served as department chair and was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. He was named professor emeritus in 2003. During the academic year 1971/72, he and two students taught at Lompoc Prison. During the 1980s and 1990s, he directed the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program (LAIS) at UCSB. Antonio Machado, Benjamín Jarnés, César Vallejo, and the films of Luis Buñuel, along with broader studies of Spanish realism, avant-garde movements, social movements of the 1920s and 1930s, and contemporary postmodernism. His scholarship also examines Hispanic literary traditions in the United States. and has collaborated extensively with scholars of Latin American, Mexican, and Chicano literature. From 1995 to 2010, he co-edited with Luis Leal the journal Ventana Abierta: Revista Latina de Literatura, Arte y Cultura, published by the Center for Chicano Studies at UCSB.