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Obituary

James Hoddie, a College of Arts and Sciences professor of Spanish who helped to shape Boston University’s language teaching methods and Spanish literature curriculum for 33 years, died on August 22.

Faculty, staff, and students in the CAS department of modern foreign languages and literatures (MFLL) held a memorial service at The Castle on September 21. Interviewed before the service, colleagues spoke fondly of Hoddie’s dry wit, his devotion to the University, and his readiness to listen. But with equal affection, they recalled his tendency to question and scrutinize.

"His approach to discussion of any issue, whether it was faculty or a change in curriculum or anything else, was the devil’s advocate role," says Katherine O’Connor, CAS professor of Russian and a former department chairman. "You could always rely on him to be initially skeptical. Yet the more you talked to him, the more you would see how flexible and interested in your ideas he really was."

A native of Attleboro, Mass., Hoddie (CAS’58) attended BU as an Augustus Howe Buck Fellow. He received his master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. at Brown.

Hoddie taught at the University of Pittsburgh and at Yale before joining the faculty of Boston University in 1967. His scholarly work focused on 19th- and 20th-century Spanish literature, and he spoke at numerous national and international conferences. His most recent books were critical analyses of work by Gabriel Miró and Ramón Gómez de la Serna, who were part of Spain’s avant-garde movement in the 1920s.

Hoddie was director of graduate studies in the MFLL department for several years. While much of his own teaching focused on literature, he edited textbooks for advanced courses on Spanish conversation and translation. "This was not scholarly work but pedagogical tools for us, the instructors," says Tino Villanueva (GRS’81), a former student of Hoddie’s in the graduate program and now a CAS preceptor. "When he saw a need, he sought to fill it."

Dorothy Kelly, professor of French and the current department chairman, recalls that Hoddie worked hard to bolster the comparative and continental European literature programs. "He looked at everything with a wonderful dry and sarcastic sense of humor," she says, "but also with very high standards."

Hoddie leaves his wife, Kathleen (SED’72), two sons, Peter (ENG’89) and Matthew (CAS ‘92), and a sister, Janet Geer (CAS’60).

2 March 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations