Keith A. McDuffie, 17-year chair of the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures and past president of the University Senate, died Jan. 9, 2025, at 92.
There will be a Celebration of Life from 6 to 9:30 p.m. March 13 at the Kimpton Hotel Monaco Pittsburgh.
“Keith became the president of the University Senate and I became interim chancellor of the University at the same time, the summer of 1995,” recalled Chancellor Emeritus Mark Nordenberg. “Relations between the leadership of the Senate and University leaders may have been at an all-time low. There was a lack of trust, and interactions often were antagonistic.
“Keith and I did not know each other, so we arranged to meet,” Nordenberg continued. “Each of us left that conversation convinced that the other was driven principally by a desire to make Pitt an even better place. Recognizing that we would not always agree on the best ways to advance that goal, we pledged that our interactions always would be civil and respectful and that neither of us would publicly surprise the other.
“Keith always met those standards, and over time, we became both partners and friends, even though we did not agree on everything. The tone that Keith helped set became a model for his successors, which clearly benefited the University. His love of Pitt was evident in the way that he handled his responsibilities, and his positive human qualities always were on display in his dealings with others.”
John Baker, emeritus associate professor in the School of Dental Medicine, followed McDuffie as Senate president a decade later. “Keith was a calming influence,” he said of McDuffie’s years at the Senate’s helm, “who tried to mediate the differences of opinion. One of his lasting Senate legacies was the hiring of a new director for the Senate’s office, which resulted in improved office efficiency.”
When he saw McDuffie several years ago at a luncheon hosted by Mark Nordenberg for past presidents of the University Senate, “he was still taking piano lessons, a hobby he'd begun in retirement and which, although challenging, gave him great pleasure.”
Katharine Baker, a former Pitt student and John Baker’s wife, recalls how encouraging McDuffie was to her own academic studies and career as a Portuguese translator, which was inspired by her Portuguese heritage: “Keith encouraged me, saying the language wasn't as hard to learn as I feared, and that he'd taken a year of it in grad school.
“He also told me many times that choosing to hire Dr. Bobby J. Chamberlain to teach Portuguese was one of the best decisions he made during his years as chair of the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature,” she added. Chamberlain, who mentored her translating career, died in 2022..
Keith Arthur McDuffie was born Feb. 12, 1932, in Spokane, Wash. Graduating from Missoula County High School in 1949, he earned his undergraduate degree in English from Gonzaga University in Spokane in 1954.
After his time in the Army, McDuffie taught English and Spanish at a Washington high school and at the Middlebury College Foreign Language Schools in Vermont. He spent the 1958-59 academic year in Spain at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, part of his pursuit of a master’s degree in Spanish, which he earned from Middlebury in 1960.
After several years teaching Spanish at a pair of New England academies, he began his university teaching career at Pitt–Johnstown in 1964, earning his Ph.D. in Spanish from the University in 1969. He taught at the University of Montana (1967-1974), chairing its foreign languages department (1969-1974), before rejoining Pitt as the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures chair. He also directed the department’s graduate program in Hispanic Languages and Literatures (1992-1994) before retiring as professor emeritus in 1996.
McDuffie had written his doctoral dissertation on Peruvian poet César Vallejo, whose work was just becoming known in the English-speaking world. At Pitt, he continued to write about Vallejo’s work and to review its translations, although his research also began to include more modern works: the telenovelas of Mexico and Brazil, Manuel Puig’s novels and contemporary Latin American short stories. His teaching focused particularly on graduate courses.
While at Pitt, McDuffie edited Revista Iberoamericana for the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana (1991-1996). He was instrumental in bringing the Semester at Sea program to Pitt, serving as Pitt’s first academic dean on the spring 1981 voyage and as Pitt’s first administrative dean on the spring 1989 voyage. He also chaired Pitt’s faculty oversight committee from 1981 to 1991.
He was an active member of the University Senate beginning in 1977, into his retirement, and was elected vice president (1985-86) and president (1995-96) while serving on many Senate committees.
He is survived by children Anne McDuffie (Tim Wood) and Andrew McDuffie, their mother Helen McDuffie, and grandchildren Sarah Wood, Tyler Wood and Olive McDuffie, her mother Courtney Anderson, and many cousins, nieces and nephews. His second wife, Pamela Bacarisse, preceded him in death.
Memorial gifts are suggested to Doctors Without Borders.
— Marty Levine