Rosemary Feal, PhD '84

Primed and ready to go 

Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal, PhD, ’84, asserts that higher education at its best prepares students to evolve personally and professionally.  Happily, her education at UB primed her to make her own professional evolution – a step, she says with humility, few with similar career histories get the chance to take. 

A scholar and teacher of Spanish language and Latin American literature, Feal’s great leap forward moved her from a long career in academia straight into the executive directorship of her discipline’s premier professional association, the Modern Language Association (MLA).  Today, she leads the New York City-based MLA’s staff of more than 100 in their efforts to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature.  Among those efforts:  providing opportunities for members to share scholarly findings and teaching experiences, hosting an annual convention and other meetings, working with related organizations and sustaining one of the finest publishing programs in the humanities.  

“My responsibility is to curate all of this,” Feal says, “and I’m grateful I got the chance to do so.” 

Professors that made the difference 

Feal’s academic history provides ample evidence of why she’s the perfect choice for her current role.  She entered UB as a doctoral student to pursue the study of Spanish language and literatures.  There, she says, she found “world-class professors – who could teach anywhere – in  a public research institution available to all kinds of people.  UB offered me a high-quality program with stringent requirements, along with a supportive atmosphere that was very important.”  What Feal calls the “infectious” enthusiasm of Prof. Mireya Camurati motivated her mastery of writing in the Spanish language and of doing meticulous research.  The subject of Feal’s dissertation, Latin American “Boom” writers like Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Mario Vargas Llosa, also became the topic of her first book.

Her first post after receiving her PhD was as a Mellon post-doctoral fellow at University of Rochester.  Thirteen years later, she left the university as a full professor of modern languages.  “That was a wonderful, long career,” she says.  In 1999, she came back to UB as a full professor in modern languages and became chair of her department in 2001.  She took a faculty leave from UB to assume her position at the MLA in 2002.  

“Coming to New York City and having the opportunity to do work on behalf of my profession is a signal opportunity,” she says, the delight in her voice obvious.  Under Feal’s direction, the MLA carries out the activities typical of a professional association.  It also takes on unique projects like a recent major report on the changing standards for achieving tenure in the United States and a map of languages spoken in this country.  An example of MLA’s public outreach is the organization’s radio program What’s The Word?, which runs on stations nationwide.  Developed to show how language and literature enriches people’s lives, What’s The Word? touches on thought-provoking topics like novels about growing up and science fiction by women.

The importance of reading 

Feal has made unforeseen discoveries in her travels on behalf of the MLA.  People in academia, she says, “are often in an isolated world.  When you step outside and evaluate public opinion of professors’ teaching, you get a whole new way of seeing.”  For instance, she frequently hears the opinion that Americans can’t learn languages.  “You’re taken aback,” she says, “because in the classroom, we don’t hear that widespread misconception.”  Even Capitol Hill staff, to whom she advocates for literature, language and teaching, have asked her why Congress should fund scholars in the humanities: “To be able to articulate a response is important and has made me think about why what we do is a valuable enterprise and why we need to ensure this kind of learning.”  Feal notes that the MLA now does outreach to “let people know that anyone, at any life stage, can learn a language.” 

Ultimately, she declares, “We need to be able to read, write and think critically.  In this cultural moment, associations like the MLA have a role to play to make sure the public continues to value humanistic learning.” 

Written by Grace Lazzara
March 2007

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