Maria Elena de Valdés

• Maria Elena Diaz Barriga de Valdés

Maria Elena Diaz Barriga de Valdés (27 Feb. 1934 – 23 Mar. 2023) was a researcher, professor, language instructor, translator, and administrator who worked at multiple North American institutions including the University of Toronto, York University, and the University of Illinois. Her academic interests covered comparative literature and key figures such as Miguel de Unamuno and Gabriel García Márquez, projects she often worked on collaboratively with her husband, Mario Valdés. Her own research and publishing concentrated on women writers of Latin America, feminist and post-colonial literary theory, and testimonial literature.

De Valdés was born in Mexico City. She received both her M.A. (1973) and PhD (1976) from the University of Toronto. Her thesis was entitled, "A conceptual analysis of the domain of Spanish studies and its application in the curriculum of university education in Ontario". Both prior to and following the receipt of her doctorate, she worked in language acquisition, both teaching Spanish language (York University and Middlebury College) and serving as Director of the Bilingual Multicultural Center at the University of Illinois.

De Valdés actively published articles, edited publications, and presented her work through the 1970s to the 2000s. She served as the editorial assistant for Revista Candiense de Estudios Hispanicos from the journal’s founding in 1976 until 1992. She co-authored and edited six books including An Unamuno Source Book (1973), Comparative and critical edition of “San Manuel Bueno, mártir” (1974), and New Visions of Creation: Feminist Innovations in Literary Theory (1993). In 1998, de Valdés authored The Shattered Mirror: Representations of Women in Mexican Literature.

Returning to Toronto from Chicago in 1979, de Valdés accepted another administrative role at UofT’s School of Graduate Studies (1980 – 1988), despite her interest in continuing her academic research full-time . In 1988, she returned to her research, studying the development of a feminist genre in Latin America, and in the following years took on various research positions. Beginning in 1995, she served as the Administrative Director for the SSHRC-funded Literary History Project and, in 2002, was a Fellow at the Latin American Studies Program of Cornell University.

Authority record written and input by D. Ansovini, 2025.