Harbage Gets English Post; Fills Old Lack

A one and a half year gap in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was filled yesterday when Provost Buck announced the appointment of a Shakespeare authority, Alfred B. Harbage, to a professorship in the English department.

Currently occupying a post as professor of English at Columbia, Harbage will join the University faculty July 1.

In terms of English department professorships, Harbage fills a vacancy that was left when F. O. Matthiessen, professor of History and Literature, died April 1950. Matthiessen was teaching the undergraduate Shakespeare course, English 123, at that time. He also carried a very heavy teaching and research load in American literature, and it is understood that the English and History and Literature departments are still on the on the lookout for a man in that field.

Spencer Once Had 123

Before his death in January 1949, Theodore Spencer, Boyiston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, shared the teaching of English 123 with Matthiessen. The course was taken over by Harry Levin, professor of English, but his main interests are not in the Shakespearian field, and an expert in the area was hadly needed.

Besides being an authority on Shakespeare, Harbage is also a student of English drama from the entire period between 975 and 1700. It is not known yet what courses he may teach in that area.

While Matthiessen called himself a professor of History and Literature, History and Literature is not a department but a committee, and Matthlessen's professorship was in the English department, from a budgetary point of view.

An attempt was made last spring through a lecture series to find an expert in American literature to replace Matthlesson, but no appointments came of it.

Harbage graduated in 1924 from the University of Pennsylvania and began teaching there immediately, becoming a full professor in 1942. He switched to Columbia in 1947