Professor Mercado is Chairperson of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at The City College of New York, CUNY, and a member of the doctoral faculty of the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures. He has worked on 19th century Spanish American literature, history of ideas, and on the Spanish exploration of what is today the United States. The author of books, reviews and articles, his most recent publication is as co-editor of Silva Studia Philologica in Honorem Isaías Lerner (2001) and editor of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés: Cartas sobre la Florida -1555-1574 (2002). [photo: City College.]