Jean Franco is a British-born academic and literary critic known for her pioneering work on Latin American literature

Latin American literature

Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the...

. Educated at Manchester

University of Manchester

The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

 and London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

, she has taught at London, Essex

University of Essex

The University of Essex is a British campus university whose original and largest campus is near the town of Colchester, England. Established in 1963 and receiving its Royal Charter in 1965...

 (where she was the university's first woman professor http://www.essex.ac.uk/40years/first40.htm), and Stanford

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, and is currently professor emerita at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

Research

Jean Franco's research is wide-ranging and voluminous. She was among the very first English-speaking Latin Americanists to write seriously about Latin American literature. She has particularly focussed on women and women's writing.

Awards

• In 1992 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.http://www.essex.ac.uk/academic/docs/cal/former.shtm
• In 1996 she won a PEN
  International PEN
  PEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
  
   award for lifetime contribution to the dissemination of Latin American literature in English.http://www.hemisphericinstitute.org/virgenes/working_group_members/working_group_franco.html
• In 2000 the Latin American Studies Association
  Latin American Studies Association
  The Latin American Studies Association is the largest association for scholars of Latin American studies. Founded in 1966, it has over 6,000 members, forty-five percent of whom reside outside the United States, LASA brings together experts on Latin America from all disciplines and diverse...
  
   awarded her the Kalman Silvert Award for her contributions to Latin American Studies
  Latin American Studies
  Latin American studies is an academic discipline dealing with the study of Latin America and Latin Americans.-Definition:Latin American studies critically examines the history, culture, politics, and experiences of Latin Americans in Latin America and often also elsewhere .Latin American studies...
  
  .http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_americas/v057/57.3ewell.html
• In 2002 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester.http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/Research/Centres/CentreforLatinAmericanCulturalStudies/News/
• Her book The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City was awarded the Bolton-Johnson Prize by the Conference of Latin American Historians for the best work in English on the History of Latin America published in 2003.http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccls/events/main/current/jeanfranco.html

Selected publications

• The Modern Culture of Latin America (1967)
• César Vallejo. The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence (1976)
• An Introduction to Latin American Literature (1969)
• Plotting Women. Gender and Representation in Mexico (1989)
• Marcando diferencias. Cruzando Fronteras (1996)
• Critical Passions: Selected Essays, edited by Mary Louise Pratt
  Mary Louise Pratt
  Mary Louise Pratt is a Silver Professor and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures at New York University.Her first book, Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse, made an important contribution to critical theory by demonstrating that the foundation of written...
  
  and Kathleen Newman (1999)
• The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin America and the Cold War (2001)

External links

• Biography from Columbia University
• Jean Franco, "The Second Coming: Religion as Entertainment", text of a lecture