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Abstract
This article discusses the pioneering Hispanist, William C. Atkinson, who was Stevenson Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Glasgow (1932–1972). Vivid recollections are contributed by six of his former Honours students of Hispanic Studies during the years 1955–1962; they were some of the first students to specialize in the new Honours degree course in Latin American Studies—the first of its kind in the UK—established at Glasgow thanks to the vision and insistence of William Atkinson. As first-year students, they found him somewhat remote; but he won their respect and affection as they became senior students, and once they were his graduates he gained also their gratitude for his unfailing support in their careers. They remember Atkinson’s characteristically meticulous lecturing techniques and the high academic standards that he and his colleagues (who included the internationally respected Hispanists Ivy McClelland and Donald Shaw) instilled into all their Honours students. Under his leadership, the Department of Hispanic Studies at Glasgow University produced fine scholars and professors in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies—including, in the latter area, James Higgins, Giovanni Pontiero, John Walker and Bernard McGuirk. As a result of Atkinson’s ground-breaking work, Glasgow University was selected to host one of the five postgraduate Centres for Latin American Studies, which, thanks to the Parry Report, were established in the mid 1960s in UK universities.
Notes
1 In 1960, together with all other major departments of Modern Languages, Hispanic Studies as mentioned later in this article, moved into the new Modern Languages Building, situated at the far end of University Gardens.
2 WCA read Spanish and French at Queen’s University Belfast (1921–1924), and then did his postgraduate studies there, under the direction of Ignacio González-Llubera; the latter had taken up a newly-created lectureship at Queen’s in 1920. WCA was one of Llubera’s first students.
3 Some of us seem to recall being told that it was a youthful Donald Shaw, then in his first tenured academic post, who, inspired by the initials of Atkinson’s first names (W. C.), provided WCA with his nickname. But others believe the nickname was already in use among students before Donald Shaw came to Glasgow in 1957. Certainly, Donald Shaw was heard to use the name ‘Chunky’ about his Head of Department when chatting to students informally.
4 Later, as the Department of Spanish Language and Literature, under WCA’s direction, broadened its interests and became known as the Department of Hispanic Studies, the Chair, too, was to be re-titled and became ‘The Stevenson Chair of Hispanic Studies’.
5 Ivy, as all the students called her (though not to her face), had been appointed by Atkinson’s predecessor, William J. Entwistle. For accounts of her career see The Eighteenth Century in Spain. Essays in Honour of I. L. McClelland, ed., with an intro., by Ann L. Mackenzie, BHS, LXVIII:1 (1991); see Mackenzie, ‘Introduction and Bibliography’, 1–11; Hesitancy and Experimentation in Enlightenment Spain and Spanish America. Studies on Culture and Theatre in Memory of I. L. McClelland, ed. Ann L. Mackenzie & Jeremy Robbins, BSS, LXXXVI:7–8 (2009); see Mackenzie, ‘Introduction’: I. L. McClelland (1908–2006)’, 9–30.
6 Donald Shaw (d. 2017) went from Glasgow University to Edinburgh University in 1964, where he was promoted to a personal chair in 1979. He moved to the United States in 1986, to become Brown-Forman Professor of Spanish American Literature at the University of Virginia. A fascinating account of his career at Glasgow University and elsewhere is to be found in his as yet unpublished memoirs (see Donald L. Shaw, Who? Me. A Memoir (Charlottesville, 2001). For details of his distinguished career, see Studies in Modern Hispanic Literatures in Honour of Donald L. Shaw, ed. Robin W. Fiddian and C. Alex Longhurst, BSS, LXXXII:3–4 (2005); see Fiddian & Longhurst, ‘Introduction’, 289–93; Modernisms and Modernities: Studies in Honor of Donald L. Shaw, ed. & intro. by Susan Carvalho (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2006); see Carvalho, ‘Introduction’, 5–17. See also the memoir by David T. Gies & Ann L. Mackenzie, ‘ “Who? Me. A Memoir”: Donald Leslie Shaw (1930–2017)’, BSS, XCIV:1 (2017), 149–55. Arsenio Pacheco (d. 2011) went to a post at St Andrews University and then on to Canada and a career at the University of British Columbia. Antoni Turull (d. 1990), an esteemed novelist and poet, went to a post at Bristol University, as lecturer, then senior lecturer in the Department of Hispanic Studies under Professor J. C. J. (Jack) Metford (d. 2007) and his successors.
7 The compulsory year abroad for Honours students of Modern Languages (to France or Spain, if French and Spanish were the two main foreign languages chosen) was followed by two more years of undergraduate study. The first Honours year was called Junior Honours, and the Final Year was Senior Honours.
8 See Studies in Latin American Literature and Culture in Honour of James Higgins, ed., with an intro., by Stephen Hart & William Rowe, BHS Special Issue (2005). See also, for James Higgins’ own reminiscences of his career, Gustavo San Román, ‘The Rise of Modern Latin American Literary Studies in the UK: A Questionnaire to Early Practitioners’, in Latin American Studies in the UK, ed., with an intro., by William Rowe, Luis Rebaza-Soraluz & Claudio Canaparo, BSS, LXXXIV:4–5 (2007), 447–94 (pp. 472–75).
9 For more information on Giovanni Pontiero’s career, see A. Gordon Kinder, ‘Giovanni Pontiero (1932–1996)’, BHS (Glasgow), LXXIII:3 (1996), 333–35; Ann L. Mackenzie, ‘Giovanni Pontiero’, The Herald, 14 March 1996, p. 22. Giovanni Pontiero did not forget his alma mater. On his death, his unique collection of ‘Eleanora Duse Papers and Memorabilia’ was bequeathed to the Special Collections at Glasgow University Library; and the ‘Giovanni Pontiero Memorial Prize’, for the best Final Year Honours student in Latin-American Studies, was established in his former Department of Hispanic Studies.
10 For more information on Atkinson’s several lengthy tours of all the Latin-American countries in 1946, 1957 etc., see, in his memoirs, Fragments of University Reminiscence (published for the first time in the present volume), Chapter 5, ‘1962: Brave New World’. See also William C. Atkinson, ‘A Rolling Stone Bows Out’, Glasgow University Gazette, 67 (December, 1971), 1–3.
11 Departments of Spanish, as noted below, were to be stimulated further to develop their interests in Latin American Studies by the Parry Report (1965), and its consequences. But the large-scale development that followed from the Parry Report came almost twenty years after William C. Atkinson had first proposed, in a ground-breaking article, his ‘Programme for a School of Latin-American Studies’, BSS, XXIV:94 (1947), 139–46.
12 Alan M. Boase (1902–1982), an authority on French Renaissance literature, was Marshall Professor of French Language and Literature, 1937–1966. W. Walker Chambers (1913–1985), a specialist in the History of the German Language, was William Jacks Professor of Modern Languages, 1954–1979. M. F. M. Meiklejohn (1913–1974), a specialist on Dante and the Sardinian language, as well as a famous ornithologist, held the Stevenson Chair of Italian, 1949–1974.
13 For Atkinson’s interesting comments on this new Modern Languages Building, see his Fragments of University Reminiscence, Chapter 4, ‘Around and about a Quincentenary’. See also his article devoted to the subject: William C. Atkinson, ‘The Groves of Academe. Modern Languages in University Gardens’, The College Courant (The Journal of the Glasgow University Graduates Association) (Whitsun, 1960), 125–29.
14 Atkinson did air his views publicly and in print on this topic. See William C. Atkinson, ‘La Trahison des Clercs’, The College Courant (The Journal of the Glasgow University Graduates Association) (Whitsun, 1958), 105–09. See also the article he published, the year he retired, titled ‘University Expansion Brings Academic Decline’, Glasgow Herald, 20 November 1972.
15 Gustavo San Román gives an excellent account of the development of Latin American Studies in the UK, including commentary on the work of the Parry Report and the establishing of these five Centres of Latin American Studies: see his ‘The Rise of Modern Latin American Literary Studies in the UK’, especially pp. 450–53; see also, in the same article, Donald Shaw’s comments, pp. 465–66.
16 See W. C. Atkinson, ‘Institute of Latin-American Studies’, Glasgow University Gazette, 54 (June 1967), 9–11.
17 See Giovanni Pontiero, ‘Professor William Atkinson’, The Independent, 30 September 1992, p. 23.
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.