Classics - Faculty & Staff

Professor Jeremy Hartnett began teaching at Wabash in 2004 after graduate work at the University of Michigan.  A specialist in Roman archaeology and social history, he studies sites in Italy including Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia, and Rome.  In particular, Prof. Hartnett is drawn to everyday life in Roman cities.

His first book, The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2017 -- Winner of 2018 James Henry Breasted Prize from the American Historical Association) breathes life back into urban thoroughfares.  Recapturing the flurry of city activity involves drawing on the evidence of historical and poetic texts, inscriptions, artwork, monuments, and buildings as well as mixing in comparative evidence.

Prof. Hartnett’s second book, The Remarkable Life, Death, and Afterlife of an Ordinary Roman: A Social History (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press), discusses a Roman funerary monument accidentally discovered under St. Peter's basilica iin 1626, which now resides in the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  Intended for students and general readers who desire more depth and nuance about Romans outside the halls of power, the project reconstructs an ancient life in as many dimensions as possible and also traces the sculpture's remarkable odyssey between Rome and Indianapolis.  In the works is another book, tentatively entitled Face to Face with the -PQR, that offers case studies of the daily embodied experience of Rome's lower social strata.

Prof. Hartnett teaches across the discipline of Classics, including both ancient languages as well as the history and archaeology of Greece and Rome.  His Elementary Latin classes are renowned for a combination of jocularity and rigor (daily quizzes!), while special-topics courses have wrestled topics as diverse as Pompeii, Early Christianity, and Wabash's next campus center.

As an undergraduate, Prof. Hartnett studied at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, and he has twice returned to teach at the Centro, most recently as Andrew W. Mellon Professor-in-Charge in 2017-2018.  He now serves as the chief executive of the Centro as its Managing Committee Chair.

One of Prof. Hartnett's greatest joys as a teacher is leading students overseas, especially to Italy – for pleasures intellectual, cultural, artistic, architectural, and definitely culinary.  In addition to his time at the Centro, he has led somewhere around a dozen other groups abroad.

Dr. Hartnett is proud to uphold the Classics Department’s reputation for feeding hungry Wallies in grand style.  Students know his gift for the grill and the pasta pot, but his family (including kids Jessie and Silas) acknowledges that he is a whiz with leftovers.  Prof. Hartnett’s passion for Michigan football and basketball, despite the playful ribbing of his students, still runs strong, but pales in comparison with his love of Wabash sports.  He is a proud member and frequent director of the Wabash College Pep Band; he zealously wields the herald trumpet and also holds the current record for most drums broken due to rabid, insatiable pep (at least 7).

Hartnett speaks of his work inside and outside the classroom.