WOMEN OUT OF SERIES : PHYLLIS BURROWS TURNBULL (1924-1971)

Phyllis Burrows Turnbull (1924-1971)

Phyllis Turnbull, full professor in the Department of Spanish at Bryn Mawr College, was director of the International Institute (1955-58) and creator in 1965 of the prestigious "Center for Hispanic Studies" at Bryn Mawr College, which had a wide impact on the training of notable Hispanists . “Miss Fillis” as she was known in Spain, she also created and financed the Children's Library of the International Institute. Closely linked to Spain, she was also the benefactor of several families in the Madrid town of Soto del Real, where a street was dedicated in her name in the XNUMXs. She there she gave scholarships to several young people so that they could study both in Spain and the United States. She was romantically linked for fifteen years to the poet Gloria Fuertes, who was a student at the International Institute of library science and English courses.

We reproduce the translation of the article by Professor Willard King of Bryn Mawr College that the International Institute published in its Bulletin on November 1, 1971 on the occasion of the death of Phyllis Turnbull.

Phyllis Burrows Turnbull graduated in Spanish literature from Wheaton College in 1947, obtained a master's degree in Spanish literature from Columbia University in 1949, and a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Madrid in 1961. In Spain in 1947, teaching English at the International Institute, he began his teaching career to which he dedicated his life with unusual devotion.

From 1949 to 1955 she was a professor of Spanish at Smith College, and acted as director of the Smith College Junior Year Abroad in Spain for three years. From 1955 to 1958 she was director of the International Institute in Madrid and in the spring semester of the 1961-62 academic year she joined the faculty of Bryn Mawr College as a professor of Spanish. In 1962 she was promoted to 'lecturer', in 1964 to 'assistant professor', also assuming in 1965 the functions of Counselor for Foreign Students; in 1970 she was appointed Full Professor. Her doctoral thesis on contemporary Spanish poetry was published in the Boletín de la Real Academia Española in 1963, and in 1969 Appleton-Century-Cofts published her only textbook called Castillla (A Cultural Reader). During the academic year 1964-65 she was named a 'visiting fellow' at the “Institute for Research in the Humanities” of the University of Wisconsin.

Phyllis Turnbull, in her modesty, gave little thought to all these valuable academic and research achievements. She would have preferred that we mention here the two things that she loved most intensely: Spain – her land and her people – and education. For about fifteen years she lived almost permanently in Spain, and never in the manner of a tourist in transit who absorbs beauty and exotic experiences without giving anything in return. She created the children's library of the International Institute in Madrid - one of the first of its kind in all of Spain; she financed - most of the time anonymously - the studies of several young Spaniards in fields such as nursing, English literature, and library science. Even now there are nine young Spaniards studying in colleges and secondary schools here or in Spain thanks to the generosity of her will.

At Bryn Mawr what she liked most was teaching – Spanish language, poetry, culture and civilization – and she was a demanding teacher who asked her students for the best. And yet, all of them without exception, both the well-prepared and the unprepared, conservative or radical, gifted or clumsy, loved her and respected her because they immediately realized that there was not an iota of falsehood, arrogance in her. or vanity. Even if she demanded a lot from her students, she gave a lot more. She opened her house to all of them, foreign or American, at any time, she found jobs for them, she took care of them when they were sick, she laughed with them, she scolded them and taught them constantly. For her there was no separation between teaching and life; they coexisted and teaching could not be restricted to the classroom and class schedules.

Because she wanted others to know and be able to appreciate Spain as she had done, and aware that this knowledge could only be achieved on the ground, she conceived the idea of ​​the Center for Hispanic Studies, of which she was the soul and director since its creation. in the summer of 1965. Through the Center, his talent reached university students from all over the country, more than two hundred to date, united among them, wherever they are, by the common bond of having studied at the Center and having met “Miss Phillies”. Through these students, many of them now teachers, she carries on her personality and reaches ever wider circles. Spain has had few interpreters abroad as valuable as Phyllis Turnbull; The United States has not had a more effective ambassador in Spain.

Pilar Piñon Varela

Article published in the Bulletin of the International Institute on November 1, 1971.

Archive of the International Institute, Madrid.