Faculty Emeriti
John B. Dalbor. Professor Emeritus of Spanish.
I was born in Erie, PA in 1929. I am married and have two sons (Steven and Michael). My wife of 56 years, Dotty, and I have lived at 512 E. Hillside Ave. (Park Forest Village) in State College since 1965. I can be reached at ph. 814-238-1227, fax 814-238-2187, and e-mail jbd2@psu.edu.
I earned my BA in journalism (1951) and my MA in Spanish (1953) from Penn State. From 1953 to 1955 I served in the U.S. Army and was stationed with the Army Security Agency in Germany. I then got my Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Michigan (1961), where I was a TA in Spanish and also an instructor in ESL. I returned to Penn State as an instructor in 1958 and retired as a full professor in 1993. I also taught in a Summer NDEA (National Defense Education Act) Institute for French and Spanish teachers at Bucknell (1962).
At Penn State I taught courses in Spanish language and linguistics, general linguistics, and a few in Spanish literature — first in the Dept. of Romance Languages (1958–63) and then in the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, established when the former department was split.
I supervised the basic Spanish courses and teaching assistants for 11 years and the intermediate and advanced Spanish language courses for 20 years. I directed the Departmental placement and credit exams for 17. I directed over 50 MA essays in Spanish linguistics and was director or co-director of five Ph.D. dissertations in Spanish linguistics and bilingual education.
I delivered papers in Spanish language, linguistics, and pedagogy and published book reviews in these fields in Hispania, Modern Language Journal, etc. I also published articles in Spanish linguistics—particularly phonetics and dialectology—in Hispania, Hispanic Journal, Hispanic Linguistics, etc. I was the editor, co-editor, author, or co-author of Imaginación y fantasía (six editions), Oral Spanish Review, Beginning College Spanish, Spanish Pronunciation (three editions), and Spanish in Review (two editions).
Since retirement, except for doing revisions of two of the above books, I have turned my attention to non-professional endeavors. My wife and I have done a modest amount of traveling in the United States. For several years I was a sound-system operator and coordinator for St. Paul's United Methodist Church in State College. For several years I delivered for State College Meals on Wheels. For 25 years I have written columns in the Penn State Wrestling Club News on the history of Penn State wrestling. Also as part of the celebration of a century of Penn State wrestling (1909–2008), I have been the lead writer for a book, A Century of Penn State Wrestling, to be published in early Summer 2008. I also like to play the guitar from time to time and play bridge regularly in a group. I am currently a volunteer doing data entry at Centre Volunteers in Medicine, a free medical clinic available to the 11,000 people in Centre Country without health insurance.
Beno Weiss. Professor Emeritus of Italian.
A native of Italy, I earned my Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literature with a Major in Italian at New York University. I taught for several years at my alma mater before joining the faculty of Penn State where I served for many years as director of the Italian Program. I have also taught on several occasions in Florence as visiting professor for the University of Pennsylvania Summer Program. At Penn State I was instrumental in the establishment of the Italian Program. I was also a pioneer in the teaching of Italian Culture and Civilization in the U.S. My research areas are nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature with a concentration on Italo Svevo and Italo Calvino. I have also done work in Spanish Golden Age literature and the Italian Renaissance. My numerous publications have appeared in Italy, Spain, Germany, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. I am still keeping up with my profession by attending lectures and occasionally
giving lectures.
My most important works are:
An Annotated Bibliography on the Theatre of Italo Svevo. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Libraries, 1974. Bibliographical Series Num. 6, 145 pp.
Beno Weiss and Louis C. Pérez. Juan de la Cueva's Los Inventores de las Cosas: Critical Edition and Study. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980. 197 pp.
Italo Svevo. Boston: Twayne World Authors Series, December 1987, 179 pp.
Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor: "El castigo de la miseria" y "La inocencia Castigada." (Edition, Introduction and Notes). Valencia: Albatros ediciones Hispanófila, 1990 (Clásicos Albatros).
Understanding Italio Calvino. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. i-xvi, 233 pp. This book is part of the Series Understanding Contemporary European and Latin American Literature.
Beno Weiss and Louis C. Pérez. Beginnings and Discoveries. Polydore Vergil’s De Inventoribus rerum. An Unabridged Translation and Edition with Introduction, Notes and Glossary. Nieuwkoop (Netherlands): De Graaf Publishers, 1997, 602 pp.
“Selected Writings by Beno Weiss” in Texts and Contexts. A Tribute to Beno Weiss. Ed. Robert Lima. State College Pa: The Orlando Press, 2001. pp. 5-54.
Office Address:
Penn State University
Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese
211 Burrowes Building,
University Park, PA 16802
Home Address:
626 Sunset Road
State College, PA 16803
E-mail: bxw@psu.edu
Tel: 814 2370763
Robert Lima, poet, critic, bibliographer, playwright and translator, is Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Comparative Literatures at The Pennsylvania State University, as well as Fellow Emeritus of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies. He is an Academician of the Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española and a Corresponding Member of the Real Academia Española. He has been honored as a Distinguished Alumnus by Villanova University, inducted into the Enxebre Orden da Vieira in Spain and named Knight Commander in the Order of Queen Isabel of Spain by His Majesty King Juan Carlos I.
Among his 24 books are The Theatre of García Lorca (Las Américas, 1963), Ramón del Valle-Inclán (Columbia UP, 1972), An Annotated Bibliography of Valle-Inclán (Penn State U. Libraries, 1972), Dos ensayos sobre teatro español de los veinte (U. de Murcia, 1984), and Valle-Inclán. The Theatre of His Life (Missouri UP, 1988). He has translated Valle-Inclán's aesthetico-mystical treatise The Lamp of Marvels (Lindisfarne Press, 1986) and his selection of short dramas Savage Acts: Four Plays (Estreno, 1993). His most recent books are Dark Prisms. Occultism in Hispanic Drama (UP of Kentucky) and Valle-Inclán. El teatro de su vida (Editorial Nigra, Spain), both published in 1995, Ramón del Valle-Inclán: An Annotated Bibliography (Grant & Cutler, 1999) and The Dramatic World of Valle-Inclán (Boydell & Brewer, 2003). His newest title is Stages of Evil. Occultism in Western Theatre and Drama (UP of Kentucky), published in December 2005.
He selected for publication, edited, and translated Barrenechea's Borges the Labyrinth Maker (NYU Press, 1965), the first critical study on Borges in English, as well as edited and contributed to Borges and the Esoteric, a special issue of Crítica Hispánica (Duquesne UP, 1993). He has published well over one hundred articles in a variety of fields.
In 1974 he created "Surrealism--A Celebration," a multi-faceted event in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Surrealist Movement. Included were theatre productions, music concerts, films, displays of rare publications, paintings, sculpture, jewelry and other objects, presentations by leading art historians, artists, and literary critics. And a Surrealist banquet. Elements of these events appeared in a special 1975 issue of Journal of General Education, which he edited.
Over four hundred of his poems have appeared throughout the U.S. and abroad in periodicals, anthologies, and in his poetry collections Fathoms (1981), The Olde Ground (1985), Mayaland (1992), Sardinia / Sardegna (2000), Tracking the Minotaur (2003), as well as his chapbooks Poems of Exile and Alienation (with Teresinka Pereira, 1976) and Corporal Works (1985). He has been elected to membership in PEN International and the Poetry Society of America. From March through August 2004, Penn State University Libraries exhibited "The Poetic World of Robert Lima," a retrospective of his poetry career from 1955 to the present.
His biography appears in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the East, Who's Who in American Education, and creative writing directories in the U.S. and abroad.
Dr. Robert Lima, OIC
Knight Commander, Order of Queen Isabel of Spain
Academician, North American Academy of the Spanish Language
Corresponding Member, Royal Spanish Academy
Professor Emeritus, Spanish and Comparative Literatures
Fellow Emeritus, Institute for the Arts and Humanities
Penn State University
Visit my Home Page at:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/rxl2
Martha Halsey mth1@psu.edu
Leon Lyday
lvv@psu.edu
Terry Peavler
tjp@psu.edu
Louis Pérez
lcp2@psu.edu
Martin Stabb
mss2@psu.edu
Alfred Triolo
aat1@psu.edu
