Nationality Guatemalan Years active 1979-present | Occupation Academic, writer | |
Full Name Marta Lucrecia Méndez Born 21 July 1943 ( 1943-07-21 ) Guatemala City, Guatemala | ||
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Lucrecia Méndez de Penedo (born 1943) is a Guatemalan university professor, essayist, researcher, and literary and art critic. She has been instrumental in rescuing some of Guatemala's literary heritage from obscurity.
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Biography
Marta Lucrecia Méndez was born 21 July 1943. In 1979, she received a degree cum laude in Spanish Literature and letters from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (University of San Carlos of Guatemala). In 1997, she earned her doctorate cum laude in Literature from the University of Siena in Italy. Both of her graduating theses were analyses of the work of Luis Cardoza y Aragón.
She has been a professor at several Guatemalan universities, including her alma mater, San Carlos; the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala; and Universidad Francisco Marroquín, as well as teaching as a visiting professor in Italy, Spain and the United States. Méndez is the Academic Vice President of Rafael Landívar University, where she has served as Vice Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Director of the Philosophy and Literature Department, Director of Postgraduate Studies, as well as the coordinator for the Master's program in Latin American Literature.
Mendéz has been both an organizer and participant in numerous conferences, symposia, and events to further higher education. She was the Guatemalan representative for the Institute of Higher Education of Latin America and the Caribbean of UNESCO (IESALC). She has led conferences in Argentina, Belgium, Colombia, Cuba, France, Italy, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, as well as multiple locations throughout Central America and the United States. She was also a founding member of the Central American Postgraduate Accreditation Agency (ACAP), to help standardize accreditation across the region.
In addition to teaching and organizing educational events, Mendéz is a writer. She is member of several editorial committees in Guatemala, Mexico and France. Her area of specialization is Guatemalan literature and she has published works on Cardoza y Aragón, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Rafael Arévalo Martínez Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Rafael Landívar and written an anthology in collaboration with Aida Toledo, evaluating short stories of Guatemalan women writers called Mujeres que cuentan, which was published in 2000. Due to the lack of information and study on Guatemalan writer Miguel Angel Asturias Méndez's efforts to rescue his work from obscurity led to recent find in Paris of his works.
Méndez is a full member of the Guatemalan Academy of the Language and a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. She also has a bi-monthly column in the publication Prensa Libre and has published numerous articles and reviews both local and international newspapers, and journals, such as Editorial Rin 78 and Revista Ístmica.