Editor's Note

Abstract

Editor's Note Bruce R. Burningham The Year 2020 has been a tough one so far. As I write these words, we are still dealing with the impact of the COVID pandemic, which has certainly changed the way we all go about the business of teaching and researching the works of Cervantes and other early modern Iberian and Latin American authors. And this year has also seen the loss of two more eminent cervantistas: Luis Murillo and Manuel Durán. This Spring issue of the journal begins with a homage essay in honor of Murillo written by Jim Parr, while the Fall issue will include a homage essay written in honor of Durán written by Roberto González Echevarría. Both scholars were important to my own education and career, and I will add my own brief thoughts on each of them in turn (for Murillo, here in this current Editor's Note; for Durán in my Editor's Note in the Fall issue). ________ Regarding Luis Murillo, I will be forever grateful for the way he took me under his wing when I was a newly-minted assistant professor at USC. I used to come back from teaching class to find him waiting for me outside my office door with a sparkle in his eye, at which point we would head off to lunch somewhere nearby. He constantly gave me (and later mailed me) copies of essays he had just written on California history and culture, and I still reach for his edition of Don Quixote whenever I am doing research. He was famous for taking the LA mass transit system as he moved about the city, and I could never get him to accept a ride home. Yes, he would allow me to give him a lift, but only as far as the nearest bus stop or Metro station. After I moved away from LA, I always tried to visit Luis whenever I was back in Southern California. We usually started with brunch in Pasadena and then he would improve my education by taking me around to visit places he [End Page 7] thought I really ought to see. On one visit, he announced that he was taking me to see the library at Cal Tech. The last time I visited him, we toured the grounds of the Pasadena City Hall, where he (reluctantly) agreed to take a selfie with me. This photo, with City Hall set against the deep blue of the Pasadena sky, and with Luis sporting his signature buzz cut and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses, quickly became one of my favorites: he was, by far, the coolest cervantista in SoCal. Abrazos, Luis, y mil gracias. ________ Regarding this Spring 2020 issue of Cervantes, we begin with two essays on gender and sexuality by Mar Martínez Góngora and Stacey Parker Aronson. These articles are followed by two essays by David Boruchoff on Cervantes's "art of brevity" in Don Quixote and Jesús Botello on ekphrasis in Los baños de Argel. Following these two articles, we offer an interlude of sorts in the form of a magisterial essay by Howard Mancing on "The Amadís Phenomenon." We then conclude with a cluster of essays written by Eric Graf, David Castillo, and Charles Patterson on Cervantes's works within the context of contemporary society. In this regard, Graf examines Don Quixote against the backdrop of this year's Black Lives Matter protests. Castillo reads "El licenciado Vidriera" in the context of our "post-truth age." And Patterson examines Anglo-American modernity in Manuel Altolaguirre's Las maravillas. The Spring 2020 issue concludes with a single book review, written by Rogelio Miñana, of Stephen Haff's Kid Quixotes: A Group of Students, Their Teachers, and the One-Room School Where Everything Is Possible. Thanks, as always, to our Associate Editors and other peer reviewers for all their hard work, to Ana Laguna for curating the book reviews, and to John Beusterien for helping me manage the submissions process. [End Page 8] Copyright © 2020 Cervantes Society of America