Roberto González Echevarría


Roberto González Echevarría is a Cuban-born critic of Latin American literature and culture. He is the Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale University.

Education and Career

During González Echevarría's studies in Florida, he was a catcher for the Wahoos, a minor league baseball team, an experience which left him with a crooked index finger. He received his bachelor's from the University of South Florida, masters from Indiana University and doctorate from Yale. He also holds honorary doctorates from Colgate University, the University of South Florida, and Columbia University. In 1999 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
After receiving his doctorate, González Echevarría taught at Yale and then at Cornell, where he was one of the first editors of the journal Diacritics. Since 1977 he has taught at Yale, where he was awarded the first endowed chair in Spanish. In 1991, he was named Bass Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature, and in 1995, Sterling Professor, the highest-ranking university chair at Yale.
His Myth and Archive won the 1989-90 MLA’s Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize and the Latin American Studies Association’s 1992 Bryce Wood Book Award, and The Pride of Havana received the Dave Moore Award for the Best Baseball Book of 2002. His Love and the Law in Cervantes had its origin in his 2002 DeVane Lectures at Yale. His Lecturas y relecturas won the 2014 Premio Anual de la Crítica in Cuba.
An international symposium was held in his honor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Arecibo and an issue of Encuentro de la cultura cubana was published in his honor. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In March 2011, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal of 2010 by President Obama. He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Social Science Research Council.

Works