Robert L. Hathaway, who taught at Colgate for 30 years and was a significant contributor to the campus community, died Thursday, December 19.
The Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures emeritus had books, articles and reviews published in Mexico, Spain, and England as well as in the United States.
He first taught modern peninsula Spanish literature but came to specialize in the literature of Spain’s golden age in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly the theater and Cervantes’s Don Quijote.
He taught at Colgate from 1964 to 1994, having chaired his department and serving as secretary to the faculty and two terms as director of the humanities division. He was instrumental in creating Colgate’s Spanish study group in Granada, Spain, in 1970 and led the group four times.
Hathaway was honored as the first Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the Humanities in 1989.
Born in Fall River, Mass., Hathaway was educated at Williams College and Brown University (MA, PhD). His wife, Phyllis, predeceased him in 1997. He is survived by his stepdaughter, Lisa Hodge, and her husband, Thomas, of Cazenovia, and their children.
Gifts in memoriam may be sent to the university’s institutional advancement office for the Robert L. Hathaway Endowed Scholarship.
There will be a celebration of Hathaway’s life on Sunday, January 5, at the Seven Oaks Clubhouse from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.