UC Irvine - Faculty Profile System

Professor Emeritus, Spanish and Portuguese
School of Humanities

PH.D., Universidad de Chile

Phone: (949) 824-7171
Fax: (949) 824-2803
Email: gestos@uci.edu

University of California, Irvine
340F Humanities Hall
Mail Code: 5275
Irvine, CA 92697

Research Interests

Literary theory, Theory of Cultures, Modern Spanish literature, Latin American theatre and poetry

Websites

www.hnet.uci.edu/gestos/villegas.html

Academic Distinctions

Prof.Villegas received the Ollantay Prize (Venezuela, 1990) for his research on Latin American theater. He also was awarded the Armando Discepolo Prize in Argentina (1996) for his research in the same field.

Research Abstract

Main fields of research and teaching: theory of theater and theory of lyric

poetry, contemporary Latin American Literature, Latin American cultures, and modern Spanish Literature. He also is the Director of the journal GESTOS, which is housed in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. Prof. Villegas teaches courses on theory of theater, Latin American theater, Spanish contemporary theater. In his recent courses on theater, he has intensely used video tapes of theatrical representation to study actual performances and theater as a mise-en-scene.

Former Chair of the Department (1973-1976 and 1977-1994)

His recent research emphasizes the re-writing of literary histories, especially theater, and the need for new strategies able to capture theater as a cultural project and the interrelationship between power, culture and theater and modes of visual representations. Prof. Villegas is working on a long monograph tentativaly intitled Teatralidad como estrategia multicultural y multidisciplinaria, and his fourth novel: Reposo prolongado.

Publications

Teoría de historia literaria y poesía lírica.
1984

He also has published three novels: La visita del presidente o adoraciones fálicas en el valle del Puelo (Mexico:1983; Chile: 206), La seductoras de Orange County (1989), Oscura llama silenciada (1993) As editor he has edited 43 issues of GESTOS, an Antología de la nueva poesía femenina chilena, with Selección, introducción, notas y bibliografía (1985); Negotiating Performance: Gender, Sexuality and Theatricality in Latin/o America .

Some of his published books are La interpretación de la obra dramática (l971); La estructura mítica del héroe (1973); Estructuras míticas y arquetipos en el CANTO GENERAL de Neruda (l976) ; Interpretación de textos poéticos chilenos (l977); Estudios sobre poesía chilena (1980), Interpretación y análisis del texto dramático (l982), Teoría de historia literaria y poesía lírica (1984), Ideología y discurso crítico sobre el teatro de España y América Latina (1988),Nueva Interpretación y análisis del texto dramático (1990), and El discurso lírico de la mujer en Chile durante el período 1975-1990 (1993)

He also edited the proceedings of the Congreso de la Asociación de Hispanistas held at UC Irvine in 1992 with the title Actas X Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas (1994): De historia, linguísticas, retóricas y poéticas (I); La mujer y su representación en las literaturas hispánicas (II), Encuentros y desencuentros de culturas: desde la Edad Media al siglo XVIII. ( III), Encuentros y desencuentros de culturas: siglos XIX y XX (IV), and Lectures y relecturas de textos españoles, latinoamericanos y U.S. latinos. (V).