Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

Professor Recognized for Contributions to Latina/o Studies

Wednesday, June 3, 2015, By Rob Enslin
Share
awardsCollege of Arts and Sciencesfaculty

A professor in the College of Arts and Sciences has been internationally recognized for his service and intellectual contributions to Latina/o studies.

Silvio Torres-Saillant

Silvio Torres-Saillant

Silvio Torres-Saillant, professor of English and Latino-Latin American studies, is the co-recipient of the 2015 Frank Bonilla Public Intellectual Award. Named for the late Puerto Rican intellectual trailblazer, the award was recently presented to Torres-Saillant at the International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) in San Juan.

He shares the award with Ana Celia Zentella, renowned linguist and professor emeritus of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego.

“I am both excited and humbled to share in this prestigious award,” says Torres-Saillant, who directed the college’s Latino-Latin American Studies Program from 2000 to 2009. “Frank Bonilla personified service, mentoring and innovative pedagogy. I am proud to have my name associated with his, especially since his legacy has offered me an invariably compelling model.”

The award was one of several given out at the LASA congress, whose theme revolved around social and labor issues in Latin America, the academic workplace and education, and modalities of knowledge exchange—all areas of personal interest to Torres-Saillant.

That he taught alongside Bonilla in New York City during the 1980s and ‘90s gives the honor added significance.

“Frank devoted his life to studying the political and economic forces that engender exploitation and injustice,” Torres-Saillant adds. “He also was at the forefront of community struggles against racial and ethnic oppression, especially in education.”

The similarities between Bonilla and Torres-Saillant are uncanny. For starters, both men had strong ties to the City University of New York (CUNY). Bonilla founded the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College; Torres-Saillant, the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute at the City College of New York. In fact, Torres-Saillant went on to co-direct the Inter-University Program for Latino Research, a national consortium that Bonilla founded at Hunter a decade earlier.

Both have proven track records in teaching, with Bonilla having held faculty positions at MIT, Stanford University and Hunter (where he rose to the rank of Thomas Hunter Professor Emeritus), and Torres-Saillant, at Hostos Community College, City College and Syracuse.

And both men have won LASA’s Public Intellectual Award—in Bonilla’s case, it was subsequently named for him.

“By linking me … with the Frank Bonilla legacy, you honor me in a way that exceeds any merits you may have discerned from my CV,” Torres-Saillant told a packed room at San Juan’s Caribe Hilton. “With this distinction, you have put me in the difficult bind of having to try my level best from now on, so I can get close to feeling I have earned it. In other words, as folks used to say when I was a kid: ‘Me la han puesto dura [You’ve given me a hard job].'”

Torres-Saillant has held a variety of faculty and administrative posts at Syracuse since his arrival in 1999. They include the William P. Tolley Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities (2009-11), chair of the Humanities Council (2012-14), and cofounder of La Casita Cultural Center (2011). A prolific scholar and social commentator, he is an expert on Caribbean and ethnic American literature; Latino texts; diasporas and migration studies; intellectual histories; and the place of race as a factor of modernity, stemming from colonial transaction marshaled by the Christian West. He is the author or editor of nearly a dozen books, including “The Advent of Blackness” (forthcoming) and the critically acclaimed “Intellectual History of the Caribbean” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Torres-Saillant also has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the University of Cartagena (Colombia) and the National University of Colombia; has been knighted by the president of the Dominican Republic; and has been featured on PBS’ “Black in Latin America” series. He earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University.

 

  • Author

Rob Enslin

  • Recent
  • Confronting ‘Who We Are”
    Tuesday, January 19, 2021, By News Staff
  • Arts and Sciences Welcomes New Director of Forensics Kathleen Corrado
    Tuesday, January 19, 2021, By Dan Bernardi
  • University College Announces Online Degree in Computer Programming
    Tuesday, January 19, 2021, By Eileen Jevis
  • Stadium Testing Center Closed for Planned Enhancements Wednesday, Jan. 20
    Tuesday, January 19, 2021, By News Staff
  • Sound Beat: Access Audio Offering Children’s Audiobooks about Enslaved People by Cheryl Wills ’89
    Tuesday, January 19, 2021, By Cristina Hatem

More In Arts & Culture

Sound Beat: Access Audio Offering Children’s Audiobooks about Enslaved People by Cheryl Wills ’89

Sound Beat: Access Audio is providing two free family audiobooks written by Emmy Award-winning journalist Cheryl Wills ’89,  the great-great-great granddaughter of Emma and Sandy Wills, enslaved people from Haywood, Tennessee. The audiobooks are narrated by the author and are…

Syracuse Stage Announces Changes to the 2020/2021 Season

Syracuse Stage announced adjustments to the schedule for the remainder of the 2020/2021 season. These adjustments include replacing previously announced shows with new titles and come in direct response to the evolving situation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting in February,…

College of Visual and Performing Arts Flexes Creative Muscle to Address the COVID-19 Pandemic

“Visual and Performing Arts students wouldn’t have a reason to be here if they couldn’t sing or hold an instrument or act onstage or spend time in the studio.  The arts are a social activity, not something that lends itself…

Special Collections Research Center Receives Grant to Process Forrest J. Ackerman Papers

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation is providing Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) with a $17,000 grant to process the Forrest J. Ackerman Papers. Ackerman was a popular American science fiction author, editor, agent, collector and fan. His…

Architecture Students Help Design Street Renovation Project in China

Since April 2020, a team of students from the School of Architecture have been working on a master plan to transform a street scape in the future city of Xiong’an New Area in China’s Hebei province. After a long delay…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2021 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.