After graduating from Central, I attended the University of Memphis to begin my training as a Latin Americanist. Every summer I went to Mexico or Spain to study and spent my junior year abroad in Lima, Peru. I graduated magna cum laude from the U of M in 1967 with majors in Spanish and History. I subsequently received a Ford Foundation Grant to do graduate work at Indiana University.

Before completing my M.A., I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and spent another year in South America, this time in Mendoza, Argentina. By 1975 I had received both my M.A. and Ph.D. from Indiana and had begun my teaching career at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Wishing to move to a research institution and to become involved in graduate studies, I accepted a position in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Georgia in Athens. Since joining the faculty in 1977, I have written three books on the representation of women in colonial Spanish American literature, the book and printing in the New World, and colonial Spanish American satire, respectively, as well as numerous articles. I am currently working on my fourth book on comedies of the New World stage that has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. I was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1990 and currently serve as the Department's Coordinator of Graduate Studies.

My passion has been world travel, and I have traveled extensively on all continents except Antartica. I am planning a trip there, however, when I retire in 2005. For a photograph of me in Russia and a list of my publications, please go to

http://www.rom.uga.edu/directory/span_dir.htm#faculty
http://www.rom.uga.edu/directory/cv/Johnsoncv.pdf