Professor Appointed to Committee on Status of Women

Rosemary Feal, professor of Spanish at the University of Rochester, has been appointed to the Modern Language Association's (MLA) Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession. She will serve for a three-year term.

This committee takes up matters of concern for women in all areas in the fields of languages and literature. The committee arranges programs for the MLA annual convention, and prepares publications related to gender issues.

"I hope to bring to this committee my scholarly and teaching interests in gender studies and lesbian studies as they relate to Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States," comments Feal. In the past, the committee has discussed such concerns as sexual harassment, career patterns for women, the status of women of color in the field, and issues such as academic leadership, and work and child care.

Feal received her doctorate in Spanish from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1984. She has been a faculty member at the University since 1986. Feal's recent publications include a co-authored book, Painting on the Page: Interartistic Approaches to the Modern Hispanic Texts. Her current project is Erotica en Espanol: Women Writing Sex Beyond Borders, an examination of the recent rise of erotic literature written by female authors from Spain and Latin America. Feal was awarded a Resident Fellowship at the Humanities Institute at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1997.