M.A. Zeitlin (1899-1993) was the chair of the Department of Spanish and Italian at UCLA. He founded the departmental program in Portuguese, helped to develop a curriculum in Latin American studies, and was a member of the initial committee on Latin American Studies. The collection consists of Zeitlin's curricular files, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, and publications and research files as well as the professional papers of his wife, Frances K. Zeitlin.

Zeitlin was born on August 29, 1899 in Chicago; moved to Arizona and attended the University of Arizona, BA (1918), MA (1920), Stanford University; continued study of French in Brussels and at the Sorbonne; accepted teaching position at University of California Southern Branch in 1925; moved to Berkeley two years later, earning a Ph.D. in romance languages with Spanish as a major field from the University of California at Berkeley in 1931; returned to UCLA in the same year as an assistant professor, later becoming chair of the Department of Spanish and Italian, as well as a full professor; founded the departmental program in Portuguese, helped to develop a curriculum in Latin American studies, and was a member of the initial committee on Latin American Studies; in 1967 he was named Comendador of the Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique by the Portuguese government and in 1968 awarded the title of Oficial of the Ordem Nacional do Cruzeiro do Sul; he was awarded the UCLA Medal for Distinguished Service in 1980; after the death of his wife Zell in 1967, he married Frances Kirschenbaum, the medieval and renaissance bibliographer at the UCLA University Research Library; Zeitlin died on September 8, 1993.

5 boxes (2.5 linear ft.) 24 oversize boxes

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