Dr. Hazel E. Barnes Ph.D

Dr. Hazel E. Barnes, distinguished professor emerita of the University of Colorado, died at her home in Boulder surrounded by her many friends on March 18, 2008. She celebrated her ninety-second birthday in December of 2007. Professor Barnes received her B.A from Wilson College and her Ph.D. in Classics from Yale University in 1941. She received an honorary doctorate from Tulane University. She taught at Pierce College in Greece just after the Second World War from 1945 to 1948, a connection that was always important to her. She was a member of the Classics Department, the Humanities Program and the Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She served as chair of both Classics and Humanities. A seminar room in Hellems Hall is named for her. The Hazel Barnes Prize is the University's most prestigious faculty teaching and research award. Professor Barnes was for many years a member of the National Phi Beta Kappa Senate and a Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar. Professor Barnes translated Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Search for a Method. She introduced the American public to existentialism in a series of ten public television programs broadcast in 1962, "Self-Encounter: A Study in Existentialism." Her books include The Meddling Gods, The University as the New Church, The Literature of Possibility: A Study in Humanistic Existentialism, Sartre, An Existentialist Ethics, Sartre and Flaubert, and her autobiography, The Story I Tell Myself. These, together with numerous articles and book chapters, make her America's best known Sartre scholar. Professor Barnes was a beloved teacher and mentor to many of America's Sartre scholars. She was an intellectual internationally admired for her rare combination of intense lucidity and deep humanity. She was much loved and will be greatly missed by her family and many friends and colleagues. Professor Barnes was preceded in death last summer by her partner, Professor Doris Schwalbe. They enthusiastically and extensively traveled the world together. They also enjoyed a delightful cabin in the mountains. She is survived by her sister, Jean Newcomer, her brother, Paul Barnes, and her niece and nephews.