William Harmon

William Harmon, who has degrees from the University of Chicago, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the University of Cincinnati, is the James Gordon Hanes Professor in the Humanities.  Since coming to UNC-Chapel Hill in 1970 he has taught more than thirty different undergraduate and graduate courses in literature, composition, and creative writing.  His specialties have been modern literature in particular and poetry in general.  He has published five books of original poetry, including winners of the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets (Treasury Holiday, 1970) and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America (Mutatis Mutandis, 1985).  He is the editor of The Oxford Book of American Light Verse and a number of anthologies, CD ROMs, and online projects sponsored by Columbia University Press, including The Classic Hundred Poems, The Top 500 Poems, and Classic Writings on Poetry.   Since 1984 he has been the editor of A Handbook to Literature (5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th editions; 11th forthcoming).  He has published scholarly articles in many journals, including PMLA and The American Anthropologist; as well as poems, notes, essays, and reviews.  In 1977 he was given a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship for study in literature and social science.  In 1999 he received the Robert B. Heilman Award given by The Sewanee Review for excellence in book-reviewing.  In 2004-06 he was the vice-president of the T. S. Eliot Society and editor of the society’s Newsletter; in 2007 he began a three-year term as president of the Society.  He is also a member of the Board of Literary Management of the Estate of the Late Laura (Riding) Jackson.  He has been gathering materials for a book about the relations between the English writer Charles Montagu Doughty and the American writers Laura (Riding) Jackson and Schuyler B. Jackson.  He and his wife, Dr. Anne Harmon  (a researcher in Public Health), are Wilson Library Fellows and members of the Chancellor’s Club.

 

Department of English and Comparative Literature | Greenlaw Hall, CB #3520 | University of North Carolina | Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520
phone: 919.962.5481 | fax: 919.962.3520