Zatlin, Phyllis, 1938-....

Dr. Phyllis Zatlin, literary critic, translator and professor of Spanish, was born on December 31, 1938, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Zatlin graduated as valedictorian from St. Petersburg High School, St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1956 and went on to complete her undergraduate education at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. In 1960, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and French, graduating with highest honors, including selection for Who’s Who among American Colleges and Universities . With the encouragement from her French professor at Rollins, Robert Morgenroth, Zatlin was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and studied at the University of Grenoble, France, from 1960 to 1961. She returned to the United States in 1962 to earn a Master of Arts in Spanish from the University of Florida as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Continuing her graduate work at the University of Florida, Zatlin received her Ph.D. in 1965 in Romance Languages; her dissertation was entitled The Bases of Humor in Contemporary Spanish Theater .

Zatlin joined the faculty of Rutgers University in 1963, and by 1966 was an Assistant Professor of Spanish and French. From 1971 to 1979, she was Associate Professor of Spanish, and was promoted to the rank of Professor in 1980. Active in university and department administration, Zatlin served as Assistant Dean of Rutgers College from 1974 until 1980 and as Department Chair and Graduate Director for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese from 1980 to 1987. In addition, she founded the Rutgers in Spain summer program in 1982 and directed the program until 1999. Zatlin also established a translator and interpreter training program in the department. She was the coordinator of the program from 1987 until her retirement. Upon retirement in December of 2008, she was granted the title of Professor Emerita.

Zatlin became a leading scholar in the field of Spanish literary criticism, as she researched, published, and presented extensively over the course of her forty-year career. She published her first book-length critical examination in 1977 on Elena Quiroga, a twentieth-century Spanish novelist. Zatlin followed with two books on Spanish playwrights for the Twayne’s World Authors Series: Victor Ruiz Iriarte, published in 1980, and Jaime Salom, published in 1982. Zatlin’s articles and conference presentations covered all aspects of Spanish theater, particularly highlighting the work of female Hispanic playwrights such as Ana Diosdado and Paloma Pedrero. Her scholarly interests expanded further into the comparative study of Spanish and French theater, and she published Cross-Cultural Approaches to Theatre: The Spanish-French Connection in 1994 .

Throughout the 1990s, Zatlin performed extensive research on French playwright and Cuban exile Eduardo Manet. Manet corresponded with Zatlin regularly, providing drafts and unpublished versions of his works while she wrote the first book-length examination of his novels and plays. Pennsylvania State University Press published Zatlin’s The Novels and Plays of Eduardo Manet: An Adventure in Multi-Culturalism in 2000. Zatlin’s articles and book served as the initial introduction of Manet’s work to North American audiences.

Zatlin’s work in literary translation led to her participation in the staging and production of Hispanic theater in America, including the plays of Manet, Paloma Pedrero, Antonio Gala, and Federico García Lorca. She has held positions on theater advisory boards. In addition to working actively as a theater translator and publishing translated editions of Spanish drama, Zatlin has worked in several editorial capacities for Estreno, a journal dedicated to contemporary Spanish theater, since 1982. She has also held a position on the advisory board of the journal Art Teatral since 1997.

Phyllis Zatlin is known by her colleagues for her exhaustive and extensive research into French and Spanish theater. She has garnered recognition from both her undergraduate and graduate alma maters, receiving a Distinguished Alumna Award from Rollins College in 1985 and the University of Florida Romance Languages and Literature Department's Outstanding Alumni Award in 2003. The Spanish Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (General Society of Authors and Editors) recognized Zatlin for her efforts in the promotion of Spanish theatre in the United States in 1997. Into the early twenty-first century, Zatlin’s work remains a backbone in the study of the multiculturalism of Spanish and French playwrights.