Karl-Ludwig Selig, professor emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese and a Cervantes scholar, died on December 1, 2012, on the Upper West Side. He was 86.
Selig is regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Known for his course “The Novella: from Boccaccio to Cervantes,” Selig passionately made the case that the modern novel is dependent on Cervantes’ picaresque
work. He also taught “Masterpieces of Western Literature and Philosophy II,” also known as “Super Lit Hum.”
PHOTO: LORI GRINKER
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Those who took Selig’s class “could never get the books, or the professor, out of [their] mind. Fifty years later, people can recite his lectures,” said Christopher Allegaert
’78 in a recent Spectator article.
Selig was born into a Jewish family in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1926. He and his parents fled to the United Kingdom in 1939, before the start of WWII, relocating to Erie, Pa. Selig earned a B.A. from Ohio State, where he also swam; an M.A. from
Ohio State; and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, where he later taught. He received his United States citizenship in 1948 and taught at the University of Minnesota, Johns Hopkins, North Carolina and Cornell before joining Columbia in 1966. Selig was presented
Columbia’s Mark Van Doren
Award for Teaching in 1974. After leaving Columbia in 1989, he taught at the University of the South (Sewanee) and at the University of Greifswald, Germany.
Selig wrote or co-authored 45 books, many of which have been translated into multiple languages.
Selig always was willing and excited to speak with his students, and dozens attended his 86th birthday celebration last August.
Harper’s Magazine Publisher John MacArthur ’78 referenced Selig last year in his Class Day address: “He wanted you to embrace the text, to read it with rigor, but also with pleasure. However, like all of my best professors, Selig insisted that
reading text was a fundamentally serious endeavor, that text must be respected.”
“He was resolved to fight as only a devotee of Don Quixote could,” said another former student, Dennis Klainberg
’84, “by staying optimistic, fighting to live another day and keeping in close touch with all his friends,
colleagues and especially, his beloved students.”
Selig had an appreciation for the rowing team, which named two sculls after him. A remembrance will be held for him this spring at the Columbia Class of 1929 Boathouse.