Dr. Alan Hollingsworth, Retired From Michigan State University

When Alan Hollingsworth decided he wanted to learn Mandarin, he arose at 5 a.m. each day to study for a few hours so he wouldn't interfere with his responsibilities as a professor.

His motivation, curiosity and wit accompanied him all his life, and he was working on his second novel during his five-year battle with leukemia. Dr. Hollingsworth died July 23 in Seattle at the age of 70.

He was well-known for his reforms in the curriculum of English departments across the country, and he was English-department chairman and later dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich.

Alan Merrill Hollingsworth was born in Santa Ana, Calif., on Aug. 3, 1920. He loved adventure movies as a child, and he later drew on his memories of films to tell his two children elaborate stories, such as the one about pirates in the Sargasso Sea.

After earning his bachelor's, master's and doctor's degrees in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Hollingsworth taught at Indiana University at Bloomington. He married his wife, Jo, in 1958.

Dr. Hollingsworth joined the faculty at Michigan State University in 1967, and he worked to create a more interdisciplinary approach to English literature in the curriculum.

He also integrated "reading theory" into undergraduate and graduate courses. Dr. Harry Finestein, emeritus professor of English at California State University at Northridge and a colleague of Dr. Hollingsworth, said that reading theory examines "the real reasons that reading is important."

"In an era where this was not considered a significant factor, Alan Hollingsworth was on the cutting edge in including these considerations into the curriculum," Finestein said.

"He was an absolutely brilliant man whose insight into university problems was so forward-looking . . . In any room where discussion was going on, he was usually at the center of it."

Besides serving as a dean at MSU, Dr. Hollingsworth also was president of the Modern Language Association and a board member of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Dr. Hollingsworth's interests extended beyond the classroom, and he traveled and lectured in China and Taiwan, drawing upon those dedicated, predawn hours of study to communicate in Chinese.

When Dr. Hollingsworth and his wife retired to Seattle in 1987, he continued to pursue his interests, even though he was already ill with leukemia. He loved the bookstores and libraries in Seattle, and was a fan of the Seattle International Film Festival and the Pacific Northwest Ballet.

His wife described how Dr. Hollingsworth continued to be creative.

"He had finished one novel and was in the process of writing another," Mrs. Hollingsworth said. "When he wasn't doing that, he was tango dancing . . . As he grew older, he grew a lot freer and was very interested in everything that had style and interest."

Besides his wife, he is survived by a son, Jeffrey, of Seattle, and a daughter, Amy Jonker and grandson, Garrett Jonker, both of Walnut Creek, Calif.

Memorials may be made to the Seattle Public Library Foundation, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104.