The University has paid tribute to two of its noted professors by naming them this year's William Clyde DeVane Professors.

As DeVane Professors, School of Architecture Dean Robert A.M. Stern and Roberto González Echevarría, Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literatures, have each been invited to deliver a semester-long lecture series that is open to the public. Stern will explore "Ideals without Ideologies: Yale's Contribution to Modern Architecture" during the fall term (see related story), while González Echevarría will discuss "Love and the Law in Cervantes" during the spring semester. Each series also serves as a for-credit course for undergraduate students.

An invitation to deliver the DeVane Lectures is considered a major honor. Those who receive that invitation hold the William Clyde DeVane Professorship, which was established in 1969 with a grant from the Old Dominion Foundation. The professorship honors the former dean of Yale College by addressing his concern that undergraduate education not become excessively narrow and departmentalized. Previous DeVane Professors include Jonathan Spence, Jaroslav Pelikan, Paul Kennedy, Sidney Altman, Martin Klein, Guido Calabresi, Harold Bloom, Vincent Scully, Charles Lindblom and the late Alexander Bickel.

Stern is a practicing architect, teacher and writer who has served as dean of the School of Architecture since 1998. He is also an alumnus of the school, having earned his M.A. in architecture in 1965.

Last year, he was named the University's J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture. Prior to his appointment at Yale, he served for many years on the faculty of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and was director of its Historic Preservation Program. From 1984 to 1988 he was the first director of Columbia's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.

Stern is the founder and senior partner of Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York, a 150-person firm that includes architects, landscape architects and interior designers. The firm has won numerous awards and citations for design excellence, including National Honor Awards of the American Institute of Architects.

As an architect, Stern is known for emphasizing the continuity of tradition and for creating buildings that take into account their aesthetic and cultural surroundings. He personally directs the design of each of his firm's projects. Some of his recent projects include the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; the Disney Feature Animation Building in Burbank, California; the Brooklyn Law School Tower in Brooklyn, New York; the Tribeca Park, a residential high-rise in Battery Park City, New York; the William Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California; and the Robert C. Byrd United States Courthouse and Federal Building in Beckley, West Virginia. He is also working with New York City and State on the revitalization of 42nd Street. His firm also has projects under way throughout the United States and in Europe, Canada, Japan and Mexico.

Stern has authored, coauthored or edited more than 20 books about design, including a series on New York City's architecture and urbanism. The second book in the series, "New York 1930," was nominated for a National Book Award, and the latest volume, "New York 1880," was given the New York Society Library Book of the Year prize. His other works include "New Directions in American Architecture," "George Howe: Toward a Modern American Architecture," and "Modern Classicism." Stern's architecture has also been the subject of 10 books.

Stern's designs are exhibited in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Museum of Art, the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. He is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and received the Medal of Honor from its New York chapter. In 1986 he hosted the eight-part documentary "Pride of Place: Building the American Dream," which aired on the Public Broadcasting System.

Roberto González Echevarría

González Echevarría is considered one of the world's foremost experts on Spanish and Latin American literature. He currently serves as chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

He has authored, coauthored or edited more than 15 books, including studies of Calderón, Carpentier, Neruda and Sarduy. His book "Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative" was awarded outstanding book prizes from the Modern Language Association and the Latin American Studies Association. His other works include "The Voice of the Masters: Writing and Authority in Modern Latin American Literature" and "Celestina's Brood: Continuities of the Baroque in Spanish and Latin American Literatures."

González Echevarría coedited the three-volume "Cambridge History of Latin American Literature" and edited the recently published "Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories." He also edited a CD-ROM on the life and work of Miguel de Cervantes, for which he received Choice magazine's Outstanding Academic Book Award for 1998.

A native of Cuba and a former semi-professional baseball player, González Echevarría received widespread media attention for his 1999 book "The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball."

González Echevarría earned his B.A. from the University of South Florida and his M.A. from Indiana University. He also holds M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale (1968 and 1970, respectively). He was an assistant professor at Yale 1970-71 before teaching for six years at Cornell University. He returned to Yale as an associate professor in 1977 and made a full professor in 1980. In 1985, he was appointed the R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish, the first endowed chair ever granted by Yale in the field of Spanish. He became the Bass Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literatures in 1991 and was honored with the Sterling Professorship in 1995. He has served two previous terms as chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and has also chaired Yale's Council on Latin American Studies.

The literary scholar has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. He has been an invited lecturer at universities in the United States, Europe and Latin America, and was the first Hispanist invited to teach in the School for Criticism and Theory. The recipient of an honorary degree from Colgate University, González Echevarría was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1999.

A fellow of Branford College, González Echevarría is a private pilot and is a member of the board of Yale Aviation.

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