Geoffrey Hartman, 1929-2016

Message from Jeffrey Alexander ~

With deep sadness, we note the passing of Senior Fellow Geoffrey Hartman. A profound textual interpreter and deeply learned cultural theorist, Hartman applied skills honed in the humanities to real world problems, most especially to the understanding of the Holocaust in our times. His suggestion that those who had perished, and those who survived, now peopled narrative equivalents of Greek legends had a profound impact on my own thinking about the Holocaust as trauma. Especially active in CCS during its early years, Geoffrey continued to stay in touch and interested. He joins Clifford Geertz, David Apter, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Mary Douglas, and Robert Bellah, the growing, and too long, roster of our other founding fathers and mothers now departed from the scene. Like these other giants of cultural analysis, Geffrey Hartman will be sorely missed and well remembered.

Obituary, New Haven Independent