It is with great sadness that the Department of Spanish and Portuguese announces the passing of Distinguished Professor Emeritus C. Brian Morris. He died on March 13th, 2025, in Santa Monica, California, surrounded by his family.
Professor Morris was an internationally-renowned specialist in twentieth-century Spanish literature and culture, whose work focused on la Generación del 27, the impact of the avant-garde artistic movement on Spanish culture of the Second Republic, the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist dictatorship, and the experience of exile. Professor Morris was an accomplished pedagogue, who succeeded admirably in making his students understand the hardships that accompanied difficult periods in twentieth-century Spanish history, which he studied from the perspective of the artistic production of the period. He leaves behind an impressive body of work that casts light on the powerful legacies of Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti and other Spanish authors. Known for the meticulous care with which he approached his scholarship, Professor Morris adopted a profoundly interdisciplinary perspective in his work, listing among his many books an important work on the relationship between literature and cinema in the period before the Spanish Civil War.
Born in Wales in 1936, Professor Morris received his B.A. in 1955 from the University of Manchester and his D.Litt. in 1975 from the University of Hull. After teaching at the University of Hull for nineteen years, he came to the United States in 1980, joining the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles. He remained at UCLA for the rest of his career, receiving promotion to Distinguished Professor in 2004 and retiring in 2007.
He authored numerous books, including A Generation of Spanish Poets, 1920-1936 (Cambridge UP, 1969), Surrealism and Spain, 1920-1936 (Cambridge UP, 1972), This Loving Darkness: The Cinema and Spanish Writers, 1920-1936 (Oxford UP, 1980), Son of Andalusia: The Lyrical Landscapes of Federico García Lorca (Vanderbilt UP, 1997), and Cantaron los ruiseñores: Ensayos sobre la poesía de Rafael Alberti (Málaga: Centro Cultural de la Generación del 27). After his retirement, Professor Morris’s work focused increasingly on authors from the Canary Islands, including the poet Pedro García Cabrera, on whom he wrote two books. In 2015, he was awarded the Medalla de Oro de Canarias, one of the most prestigious honors offered by the government of the Canary Islands.
Professor Morris’s death was widely reported in the Spanish news media, including La Vanguardia:
https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20250314/10481232/fallece-brian-morris-especialista-poeta-garcia-cabrera-medalla-oro-canarias-agenciaslv20250314.html