Robert G. Mead, Jr. Papers

Robert G. Mead, Jr. was born in 1913 in Cleveland, Ohio. His father, an engineer, relocated to Mexico eight months later. It was in Mexico that Mead spent most of his first twenty years, living in Tampico and later in Mexico City. He attended the University at California at Berkeley for a brief period in the middle 1930s, but had to drop out for financial reasons. He taught English at a private academy in Mexico from 1936-1937. After his return to the U.S., Mead enrolled at UCLA, where he received his M.A. in Spanish literature in 1942. Mead then traveled east to work for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. There, he surveyed Latin American periodicals for matters relating to American intelligence, preparing a report on a Mexican political group suspected of having Nazi leanings.

Upon leaving the employ of the government in 1947, Mead went to the University of Michigan, and in 1949 finished his doctoral thesis on Peruvian essayist, Manuel Gonzalez Prada, which was written entirely in Spanish. Shortly thereafter, Mead accepted a full-time post at the University of Connecticut.

While engaged in teaching at the University of Connecticut, Mead contributed a number of articles on Hispanic and Latin American literature to scholarly journals. Many of Mead's writings appeared in the journal Hispania in a section called “The Hispanic World.” Mead was also the editor of Hispania from 1957 to 1962. In the early 1960s Mead worked with the Modern Language Association's newly established summer language institute program. As part of this program, Mead traveled the country and made on-site evaluations of over 42 programs. In later years Mead served on the editorial boards of other academic journals and worked with organizations dedicated to the promotion of foreign language education and intercultural understanding. Mead lectured at more than thirty universities and accepted several visiting professorships while maintaining close ties with the University of Connecticut.

Mead received the prestigious Florence Steiner Award for Leadership in Foreign Language Education in 1982. He retired from the University of Connecticut in 1984, but thereafter maintained a high level of scholarly activity. Mead passed away in 1995.

Mead was a dedicated teacher, an active scholar, and a pioneering multiculturalist. The numerous tributes received by Mead during his life and after his death are a testament to his profound impact on the teaching of foreign languages. An outspoken advocate for improved Inter-American relations, he stressed the need for an awareness of Latin American history and culture.