Margherita Tortora

Senior Lector II in Spanish and Portuguese

Margherita Tortora, BA, Smith College; MA, University of Texas at Austin; faculty member at Yale since 1993: You have been a dynamic, dedicated, and widely admired member of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for over thirty years.

You’ve brought language acquisition to life for your students with teaching that has gone beyond the pages of the textbook to delve into aspects of many different Spanish-speaking communities. Your students have benefitted from your teaching and your mentorship alike, both of which have not been confined to the classroom: you have guided students in their academic and professional endeavors, and, in the process, forged bonds that last a lifetime.

You have taught all levels of Spanish here at Yale, and your students have grown immensely thanks to your rigorous, approachable, and activity-oriented teaching style. Your students are known to take many of your classes, to study with you during summer study abroad sessions in Ecuador, and to wholeheartedly embrace the community-oriented approach to learning you embody. Your innovative teaching was recognized with a well-deserved prize in 2024: the Richard H. Brodhead ’68 Teaching Prize, awarded to recognize your excellence as a teacher here at Yale.

The Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale, known fondly as LIFFY, which you founded and have guided since 2015, is another major achievement in the eyes of your colleagues, students, and the wider New Haven and global film communities. You broke new ground by amplifying underrepresented voices within film, which you have committed to by founding and overseeing local and regional film festivals since the 1990s.

You have created space for meaningful cross-cultural dialogue by including Latin American, Iberian, and Latino/a films in the festival; by exploring Ibero-Romance languages and Iberian languages that do not derive from Latin; and by being sure to include many varieties of Spanish and Portuguese and the indigenous languages of the Americas in your organization of the festival. Your efforts to spread the educational value of the festival beyond Yale’s walls to local schools and the community have been deeply felt and appreciated.

Your efforts to create a warm, friendly, and outward-looking culture in your department, to create bonds between your department and other on-campus centers and beyond will have a profound effect on Spanish and Portuguese at Yale for many years to come. As one of your colleagues said, “Margherita’s skill at bringing people together—students, faculty, or artists—has enriched Yale intellectually and culturally. She is unequaled in her passion for teaching, dedication, generosity, and kindness.”

As you retire, we thank you for your service to your students, to Yale, and to New Haven—your beloved hometown, which we know you will continue to enrich and enjoy in this new chapter.