Helena Percas de Ponseti has been a writer, essayist, scholar, and professor. She received her undergraduate degree

Undergraduate degree

An undergraduate degree is a colloquial term for an academic degree taken by a person who has completed undergraduate courses. It is usually offered at an institution of higher education, such as a university...

 from the Institut Maintenon in Paris, France

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, her Master's Degree from Barnard College

Barnard College

Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...

 and her Doctorate from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in New York.
From 1948 to 1990 Percas was a Professor in the Spanish Department of Grinnell College

Grinnell College

Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, U.S. known for its strong tradition of social activism. It was founded in 1846, when a group of pioneer New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College....

, in Iowa

Iowa

Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

, U.S. When she retired she was named Professor Emerita

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

, and 10 years later, she established an annual award for the most outstanding senior in the Spanish Department, Helena Percas de Ponseti Senior Award in Spanish and created a fund for research in the area of Hispanic Culture. Furthermore, she donated to the college her valuable collection of books written by Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

n women.

Published works

• La poesía femenina argentina (1810-1950)
• La cueva de Montesinos, Revista Hispánica Moderna (Homenaje a Federico de Onís, I), XXXIV (1968), pp. 376-399
• Cervantes y su concepto del arte, Gredos, Madrid, 1975, 2 vols
• Sobre el enigma de los dos Cervantes, The American Hispanist, II (1977), pp. 9-11
• Los consejos de Don Quijote a Sancho, Cervantes and the Renaissance, ed. M.D. McGaha, Juan de la Cuesta, Newark, 1980, pp. 194-236
• Authorial Strings: A Recurrent Metaphor in DQ», Cervantes, I [1-2] (1981), pp. 51-62
• Tate, tate, follonzicos... Once Again: The Metamorphosis of a Locution, Cervantes, VII [2] (1987), pp. 85-89
• Cervantes the Writer and Painter of «Q.», University of Missouri Press
  University of Missouri Press
  The University of Missouri Press is a university press founded in 1958 at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.-External links:*...
  
  , Columbia, 1988
• A Revision: Cervante’s Writing, Cervantes, IX [2] (1989), pp. 61-65
• Cervantes y su sentido de la lengua: traducción, Actas II, 1991, pp. 111-122
• Nota a la nota sobre una nota: “impressa”, no “empressa”, Cervantes, XV [1] (1995), pp. 164-166
• ¿Quién era Belerma?, Revista Hispánica Moderna, XLIX (1996), pp. 375-392
• Norah Lange y su Poesía, Hispania, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Feb., 1953), pp. 79-84
• Maria Dhialma Tiberti, promesa para la Argentina, Estudio, Revista Iberoamericana XVIII/36 (marzo 1953):361-368.