author
Willis Knapp Jones
1895–1982
A longtime scholar of Spanish and Latin American literature, this American professor helped open Latin American drama to English-speaking readers. His work moved between teaching, translation, bibliography, and theatre history, with a warm belief that plays could bring cultures to life.
1 Audiobook
Return to Earth
by Willis Knapp Jones
About the author
Born in Beacon, New York, in late November 1895, Willis Knapp Jones studied at Hamilton College, earned a master's degree at Pennsylvania State University, and later completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. He taught Spanish at Penn State before joining Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1923, where he spent much of his career.
Jones is remembered as a scholar of Spanish and Latin American literature and theatre. Archival and library records connect him with works such as Latin America through Drama in English and Behind Spanish American Footlights, and his papers on Latin American theatre programs show how closely he followed the stage as well as the page.
A Miami University memorial described him as a humanist, scholar, and above all a professor, which fits the picture that survives in university records. He died in 1982, but his name continued at Miami through the Willis Knapp Jones Award in Spanish and Portuguese.