US Hispanism and the Enigmatic Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa

During the 1910s and 1920s, a Hispanist movement swept over the United States.  Briefly, Hispanism involved the study and promotion of Spanish history, language and culture.  It engaged a web of scholars and journalists and statesmen in the advancement of a positive appraisal of Spain’s legacy. Hispanists repudiated Black-Legend interpretations of Spain’s past—which emphasized depravity and despotism—and reclaimed for Spain some measure of its former stature and influence in world affairs.

This paper will examine the private correspondences of one of the United States’ most fervent Hispanists, Aurelio Macedonio Espinosa (1880-1958).  Born in Colorado this self-identified “Spanish American” was a prolific Stanford philologist, with scores of textbooks, monographs, and articles to his name.  In 1917 he was the founding editor of the journal Hispania, the flagship journal of the American Association for Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP); and throughout the 1920s he was deeply influenced by and connected to Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Spain’s most revered authority on the Spanish language.  Despite his prominence, today Espinosa remains a rather inscrutable figure in the history of Hispanism.  This may be due to the inaccessibility of his personal papers, which are privately held and inaccessible. 

This paper will piece together aspects of the enigmatic Professor Espinosa.  Using recovered correspondences it will map some of his scholarly networks and take measure of his impact on Hispanism.  Today’s leading scholars—among them, José del Valle, James Fernández, Sebastiaan Faber and Mabel Moraña—have shown that Hispanism was a dynamic, far-reaching movement that responded to particular political and ideological agendas.  By examining Espinosa’s private writings, we can gain insights into Espinosa’s particular brand of Hispanism and, in so doing, begin to explore the role of U.S. Latinas and Latinos (or, erstwhile “Spanish Americans”) in transnational intellectual networks and global “soft power.”