A Retrospect of Origins

I was a graduate student in Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the early 1960s, so observed at first hand the gestation and birth of the Luso-Brazilian Review. Sixty years later, the memories are still fresh and worth sharing.

The teaching of Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin–Madison had its origins in philology and linguistics rather than literature, due to the presence of faculty members such as Prof. Lloyd Kasten, who taught full course loads in Spanish and in addition offered “independent study” sessions in Portuguese on the side, usually in the late afternoon. This situation changed radically after the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in 1958, which provided monetary aid to colleges and universities as well as to graduate students to stimulate the teaching/learning of math, science, and strategic modern foreign languages inadequately taught previously, among which was Portuguese. Funds from the NDEA made possible the hiring (at universities already offering the language) of a series of international visiting professors to stabilize and enrich these existing programs and produce a generation of new faculty members to create programs in other schools not yet offering such curricula in languages, literature, and culture. I was privileged to be one of the NDEA fellowship recipients in the “first wave” of grantees at the UW–Madison. After completing the PhD in 1965, I devoted twelve years to establishing a Portuguese program at the University of Iowa before returning to the faculty of the UW–Madison to facilitate the transition from an NDEA-based Portuguese program to a locally supported faculty-staff (including teaching assistants) and student body.

One of the early fruits of NDEA support of the Luso-Brazilian program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison was the birthing of the Luso-Brazilian Review in 1963, with its first issue being published in June, 1964. The founding Editor, Prof. Alberto Machado da Rosa, speaks in his introductory statement of the vision of a semi-annual, multi-disciplinary and bilingual (Portuguese/English) journal. He envisions the periodic inclusion of bibliographies and bibliographic studies, as well as book reviews and notices of new publications in the field. Contributions will be expected from established scholars, though the journal will also encourage publication by advanced graduate students and younger scholars. (Personally speaking, the second of my own scholarly articles was published in the summer, 1965 issue [2:1] of the journal.) The LBR’s initial issue was comprised of several panoramic papers presented at the Symposium on Luso-Brazilian Studies held at the UW–Madison in April, 1962: “O Renascimento Galego Contemporâneo” (Ernesto Guerra da Cal), “Contemporary Portuguese Scholarship in North America” (Gerald Moser), “The Attraction of the East and Early Portuguese Discoveries” (Francis Rogers), “O Ensino da Literatura no Brazil” (Antônio Soares Amora), “Brazilian Literary Criticism Today” (Raymond Sayers), and “O Escritor Brasileiro em Nossos Dias” (Érico Vérissimo). And in its early issues, the LBR included a “Correspondence” section where reader opinions might be expressed.

The Luso-Brazilian Review and I have enjoyed a long life together. While teaching at the University of Iowa, I frequently served as editorial reader for the journal, and after returning to the University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty full-time in 1977, I served for twenty years (1978–1998, the year of my retirement) as literary co-editor. And during these past twenty-five years (since retiring), I’ve served on the Editorial Board.

Now the LBR is celebrating sixty years of uninterrupted semi-annual publication. As one who has accompanied it in various capacities for that entire period, I have the pleasure of singing “Happy birthday to you, Luso-Brazilian Review” and “May your future be as fruitful as your past!”