Efrain Kristal

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A premier professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, Kristal has been instrumental in program development. Under his leadership as chair of the Curriculum Committee, the department has completely revised its graduate and undergraduate programs in the past four years, developing team-taught classes that integrate the study of Spanish and Spanish-American literature. He has demonstrated tremendous creativity in designing his courses, inspiring students to draw connections between areas they normally wouldn’t associate with one another. His colleague Kathleen Komar notes, “In his (Comparative Literature 1B) course, he has greatly increased the enrollment in a few short years. Students admire his sagacity, wit and articulate style.”

With his teaching evaluations consistently above eight (out of the nine-point scale), Kristal has proven extremely popular with his students. Another measure of his esteem amongst graduate students is the high number of auditors who attend his class.

In addition to teaching, he offers his time to a number of Ph.D. and M.S. students, chairing and serving on several guidance committees. His generosity also extends into the community. Kristal has taught a course on Latin American literature for high school teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, given literature classes at a mid-town adult school and delivered pre-performance lectures for the Los Angeles Opera.

Just one of many current and former students who life he’s impacted, Carmela Zanelli concludes, “Thanks to Dr. Kristal’s constant stimulus and devotion, I learned to be not only a better scholar but a dedicated professor and perhaps a better human being. It is impossible not to appreciate his generosity and commitment to the people he works with.”