Claremont, Calif. (January 25, 2016)—Pitzer College Assistant Professor of Chicano/a-Latino/a Transnational Studies Suyapa Portillo Villeda has been elected to the executive committee for the Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies (CLCS) Hemispheric American Forum of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Her five-year term on the committee began on January 11.
The Modern Language Association is a leading advocate for the study and teaching of languages and literatures and serves as a clearinghouse for professional resources for teachers and scholars. The MLA forums encompass the scholarly and professional concerns of the association, providing a map of the discipline of language and literature studies and of its connections to other disciplines.
Portillo writes in both English and Spanish about the labor movement and gender issues in Central America as well as immigration and transnational social movements for major news publications around the world. Her current research focuses on the Great Banana strike of 1954 in Honduras, exploring how the striking workers influenced the formation of the country’s labor movement and the nation as a whole. Portillo earned her BA at Pitzer and her MA and PhD at Cornell University.
