This spring, our school suffered a great loss: Luisa Elena Delgado, professor of Spanish and former director of the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics, passed away after a long battle with cancer.
Elena was both a great colleague and dear friend with whom I had the privilege to work for 23 years. I shared these words about her contributions in the areas of research, teaching, student mentoring, leadership, and service during her retirement celebration in March.
I met Elena back in December 1999. From the moment I set foot on campus for my visit, Elena showed true collegiality and empathy when I needed to set up my interviews with a break so I could sprint to the Illini Union hotel to breastfeed my 4-month-old baby. She was accommodating and understanding and made sure my visit went well even amid a winter storm. When I joined the department in January 2000, her kindness, guidance, and mentorship were key in my acclimatization into the department. It was the beginning also of a close friendship that I still cherish today.
It was in early 2018, when I served as head of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and was writing a letter of nomination for the prestigious University Scholar award—which she received that year—that I was able to comprehend even better her contributions to the department since she joined in 1990.
Elena was a specialist in Spanish literatures and cultures with a special emphasis on 19th century modernist literature and the cultural production of Spain in the 20th and 21st centuries. She was a literary and cultural critic, whose work on contemporary Spanish culture and politics had a major impact, both in the field of Hispanic studies at large, as well as on current public debates on the role of culture in plural, multilingual democratic states. Her latest sole-author book, La nación singular. La cultura del consenso y la fantasía de la normalidad democrática española [The Singular Nation: The Culture of Consensus and the Fantasy of Spanish Democratic Normalcy], published in 2014, cemented her reputation as one of the most important cultural critics of contemporary Spain.
But research was only one of Elena’s strengths. She was also an outstanding teacher. Although she was hired as a specialist in 19th and 20th century Spanish literature, in the last 10 years of her tenure, the focus of her research and teaching expanded to include all forms of cultural production.
During her years at Illinois, she consistently received ratings of “high” or “very high” in a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. Her name often appeared on the list of Teachers Ranked as Excellent. She supervised more than 10 doctoral dissertations and participated in numerous dissertation committees in and outside the department.
Elena did a formidable job in mentoring undergraduate students on campus and abroad and in helping graduate students become successful members of academia. She was committed to contributing to the excellence of our Spanish program, actively participating in all major curriculum revisions.
In her leadership position as director of SLCL between 2020-2022, she demonstrated a strong commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration among SLCL units while advocating to the College of LAS on our behalf. She led the 2021 intercultural competency initiative as part of the Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities. She was devoted to the wellbeing of her employees and worked very hard to make SLCL a strong community.
As a colleague I always admired her commitment to equity, transparency, and to making sure that the initiatives we pursued were sought to benefit the department as a whole and not only few. She always contributed to our discussions with brilliant ideas, thorough knowledge, care for others, and intellectual respect. She was a doer and in that sense, the famous quote by Bell Hooks fit her perfectly: “What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe.”
Here is to an academic career full of success and the extraordinary friendship that I was able to share with her.
Mil gracias por todo.
Editor's note: This tribute first appeared in the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics fall 2024 newsletter.