Debra Castillo, professor of Romance studies and comparative literature, has been appointed to a three-year term as director of Cornell's Latin American Studies Program (LASP).

Castillo, whose research interests include modern Hispanic narrative, feminist theory and post-colonial theory, succeeds Lourdes Beneria, professor of city and regional planning and women's studies, who had served as LASP director since 1993. Castillo's appointment was effective July 1.

Cornell's Latin American Studies Program, founded in 1961, provides a focus for all activities oriented toward Latin America on the Cornell campus. The program stimulates teaching by establishing contacts with Latin American universities and institutions, supporting research through grants to faculty members and graduate students and sponsoring visiting scholars from Latin America. LASP also offers a concentration (Cornell's equivalent of a minor) in Latin American studies for undergraduate students, as well as a graduate minor. The Cornell program has been designated as one of 13 National Resource Centers in Latin American studies by the U.S. Department of Education under its Title VI program.

Castillo, who joined Cornell in 1985, is the author of Talking Back: Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary Criticism (Cornell University Press, 1992). She recently translated and wrote the introduction to Federico Campbell's Tijuana: Stories on the Border (University of California Press, 1995). Her most recent work is her forthcoming Easy Women: Sex and Gender in Modern Mexican Fiction (University of Minnesota Press).

Castillo has been involved with the Latin American Studies Program since 1988, serving on a variety of LASP committees, and she has taught a variety of courses related to Latin American studies, including Introduction to Hispanic Literature, Post-revolutionary Mexican Novel, Modern Hispanic Women, and Gender and Sexuality in Latin America.

She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 1975 and master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1978 and 1982, respectively.