by Deborah Kamen
When Prof. Daniel P. Harmon passed away on July 25, 2021, he left a number of lasting legacies. In addition to creating the Department’s Seminar in Rome in 1987 and expanding the number of faculty in our Department (thus contributing to the thriving Department we have today), Dan provided a truly generous gift to the Department of Classics that has established three funds: the Daniel P. Harmon Endowed Professorship, for a UW Classics faculty member to hold; the Daniel P. Harmon Endowed Lectureship, to fund a distinguished visiting lecturer; and the Bernard and Dorothy Harmon Memorial Fund, in honor of Dan’s parents, to subsidize the purchase of Classics-related books for the Department’s Meg Greenfield Room and for the UW Libraries.
I am delighted to announce that our inaugural Daniel P. Harmon Professor of Classics (2022-2025) is Prof. James Clauss. In addition to being one of Dan’s closest friends and collaborators, Jim worked with Dan for years to translate and revise Coarelli’s influential Rome and Environs. Jim has also admirably carried on Dan’s tradition of teaching abroad, founding the OMA&D Rome Program in 1995 (and leading it sixteen [!] times since then) and running Classics study abroad programs in Greece and Italy with the UW men’s basketball team and women’s volleyball team, among other student athletes.
I am also happy to share that our inaugural Harmon Lecturer (in 2023-2024) will be Prof. Joseph Farrell, Professor of Classical Studies and Mark K. and Esther W. Watkins Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. A distinguished scholar of Latin poetry with interests in Roman religion and topography, topics of special interest to Dan, Joe is most recently the author of Juno’s Aeneid: A Battle for Heroic Identity (2021).
Finally, the Department’s Library Committee is currently drafting a list of books for the Department to acquire this year through the Harmon Memorial Fund.