Geoffrey Hartman was an expert on rhetoric, literary theory, and holocaust history who spent his career teaching at Yale University in the comparative literature department. He was a proponent of post-structuralist and deconstructive critical practice, Hartman is known for his books and essays on romanticism, literary interpretation and theory, philosophy and psychoanalysis.
Hartman was born in Germany to an Ashkenazi Jewish family before being sent away from Germany as a Jewish refugee who eventually obtained citizenship in the United States. Hartman spent much of his time researching the Holocaust, and, in particular, Holocaust remembrance.
He is a co-founder and faculty advisor to the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale; has served on the board of the Holocaust Survivors Film Project, Inc.; has been a special advisor to the chairman and has served on the education committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council; has served on the advisory board of the ADL International Center for Holocaust Studies; and served as chairman of Connecticut's state ceremonies for the 1987 Holocaust Remembrance. He serves as co-chair of the Holocaust Education and Prejudice Reduction Program in the New Haven school system.
(Photo Courtesy of Cathy Caruth, Director of Graduate Studies, Comparative Literature at Cornell University)