In 1976, Edwin Sill Fussell '43 and Paul Fussell, Jr. '45 initiated a fund in honor of their teacher, Charles S. Holmes, who taught at Pomona College between 1941 and 1975. The Fussell brothers gave only the broadest of instructions for the use of this fund, leaving it up to the Department of English at Pomona College to decide how best “to further the encouragement of excellence and inspiration in undergraduate teaching.” Each year, since 1993, a member of the English Department has invited a scholar who has in some particular way inspired him or her as a teacher and scholar to come to campus and share their work with us.
Past Holmes Lecturers
| Year | Lecturer |
|---|---|
| 1993 | Harry Berger, UC Santa Cruz |
| 1994 | John Alford, Michigan State University |
| 1995 | Sara Suleri Goodyear, Yale University |
| 1996 | Christopher Ricks, Boston University |
| 1997 | Stephen Greenblatt, University of California Berkeley |
| 1998 | Wayne C. Booth, University of Chicago |
| 1999 | Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University |
| 2000 | Louis Menand, City University of New York |
| 2001 | Joyce Ann Joyce, Temple University |
| 2002 | Juliet McMaster, University of Alberta at Edmonton |
| 2003 | D.A. Miller, University of California, Berkeley |
| 2004 | David Bevington, University of Chicago |
| 2005 | Susan Stewart, Princeton University |
| 2006 | Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara |
| 2007 | Marjorie Levinson, University of Michigan |
| 2008 | Mark Hansen, University of Chicago |
| 2009 | Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania |
| 2010 | Lawrence Buell, Harvard University |
| 2011 | Deidre Shauna Lynch, University of Toronto |
| 2012 | Sianne Ngai, Stanford University |
| 2013 | Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago |
| 2014 | (Spring) Anne Anlin Cheng, Princeton University |
| 2015 | Enda Duffy, Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara |
| 2016 | Charles Baxter, Professor of English, University of Minnesota |
| 2017 *Spring |
Jacqueline T. Miller, Rutgers University |
| 2017 *Fall |
William E. Jones, Artist and Writer |