The Sigmund H. Danziger Jr. Memorial Lecture in the Humanities is an annual honorary bestowed upon an “established scholar of classical literature, who has made substantial contributions to the critical analysis of classical literature, or has been exceptionally skilled at inspiring an appreciation for classical literature” by the Humanities Division of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. Sigmund H Danziger Jr. (1916-1979) founded Homak Mfg. Co. Inc. in 1947 in Chicago. A Chicago southsider and son of a sales representative for houseware products, including bathroom scales, Mr. Danziger began his business career “jobbing” for Chicago manufacturers while a student at the University of Chicago (graduated 1937). After the World War II, in which he served as a captain and translator, he purchased a bathroom cabinet manufacturer on the south side of Chicago for which he was jobbing. Naming the new company Homak, capturing a sign he noted on a hat store, he began manufacturing steel kitchen cabinets and rapidly moved to a building, which he designed at 4433 S. Springfield Ave in Chicago. In the early 1960s, an order for tool boxes lead to the production of a hardware line including roller cabinets, tool boxes, and other accessories. Through the 1970s and 1980s, most of the major retailers and chains of the time became either line or private label customers at one time or another, including

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

Kmart Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States. The company was inc ...

, Lowe's,

The Home Depot The Home Depot, Inc., is an American multinational home improvement retail corporation that sells tools, construction products, appliances, and services, including fuel and transportation rentals. Home Depot is the largest home improvement re ...

True Value In statistics, as opposed to its general use in mathematics, a parameter is any measured quantity of a statistical population that summarises or describes an aspect of the population, such as a mean or a standard deviation. If a population exa ...

, Ace Hardware,

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curren ...

, Coast-to-Coast,

Costco Costco Wholesale Corporation (Trade name, doing business as Costco Wholesale and also known simply as Costco) is an American multinational corporation which operates a chain of membership-only Big-box store, big-box retail stores (warehouse c ...

Meijer Meijer Inc. (, ; stylized as meijer) is an American supercenter chain that primarily operates throughout the Midwest. Its corporate headquarters are in Walker, Michigan, which is a part of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. Founded in 1934 ...

, Pep Boys,

Fingerhut Fingerhut is an American catalog/ online retailer. Fingerhut was founded in 1948 by William Fingerhut and his brother Manny, selling automobile seat covers. In 1952, the business repositioned itself as a mail order catalog company and diversif ...

, NAPA, etc. In 1979, Sigmund Danziger died and his wife Gertrude (Trudy)(1919-2021), who was known as "The Toolbox Lady" in the hardware industry, ran the company for the next 25 years. During this time, the company moved to a facility in

Bedford Park, Illinois Bedford Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States, and is an industrial suburb of Chicago. The population was 602 at the 2020 census. Bedford Park consists of a small residential area and vast amounts of heavy industry sprawling t ...

at 5151 W 73rd St. while sales grew to over $100,000,000 with hardware, automotive, hospital (under Homed TM), and sporting goods lines. One of the major innovations during this period was the introduction of a consumer gun cabinet (under HomSafe TM), which instantly grew to be a major hit at mass retailers, including

Bass Pro Shops BPS Direct, L.L.C, doing business as Bass Pro Shops, is an American privately held retailer which specializes in hunting, fishing, camping, and other related outdoor recreation merchandise. With headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, Bass P ...

Gander Mountain Gander Mountain, later known as Gander Outdoors and Gander RV, headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, was a retail network of stores for hunting, fishing, camping, and other outdoor recreation products and services. History Gander Mountain Inc ...

, Dick's Sporting Goods and

Sports Authority Sports Authority, Inc. (formerly The Sports Authority) was an American sports retailer. At its peak, Sports Authority operated 463 stores in 45 States and Puerto Rico. The company's website was on the GSI Commerce platform and supported the ret ...

. Also a line of garage cabinets was introduced for

Whirlpool A whirlpool is a body of rotating water produced by opposing currents or a current running into an obstacle. Small whirlpools form when a bath or a sink is draining. More powerful ones formed in seas or oceans may be called maelstroms ( ). ''Vo ...

and

under the label "Gladiator Garageworks." Homak employed hundreds of people, who enjoyed the prosperity of the industry, and was the largest privately held sheet-metal fabricator in America.

List of Sigmund H. Danziger Jr. lecturers

* 2021-2022.

David Wengrow David Wengrow (born 25 July 1972) is a British archaeologist and Professor of Comparative Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He co-authored the international bestseller '' The Dawn of Everything: A New Hist ...

* 2020-2021. Judith Butler * 2019-2020 William Johnson * 2018-2019.

Fiona Macintosh Fiona Macintosh is Professor of Classical reception studies, Classical Reception at the University of Oxford, Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Curator of the Ioannou Centre, and a Fellow of St Hilda's College, O ...

* 2017-2018

Marina Warner Dame Marina Sarah Warner, (born 9 November 1946) is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publicat ...

* 2016-2017.

Simon Schama Sir Simon Michael Schama (; born 13 February 1945) is an English historian specialising in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He fi ...

* 2015–2016

Daniel Boyarin Daniel Boyarin ( he, דניאל בויארין; born 1946) is a Religion historian, Born in New Jersey, he holds dual United States and Israeli citizenship. He is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments ...

* 2014–2015 Stephen Greenblatt * 2013–2014 John T. Hamilton * 2012–2013

Julia Annas Julia Elizabeth Annas (born 1946) is a British philosopher who has taught in the United States for the last quarter-century. She is Regents Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Arizona. Education and career Annas graduated from ...

* 2011–2012.

C. Brian Rose Charles Brian Rose is an American archaeologist, classical scholar, and author. He is the James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania in the Classical Studies Department and the Graduate Group in the Art and Archa ...

* 2010–2011

Anthony Grafton Anthony Thomas Grafton (born May 21, 1950) is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. He i ...

* 2009–2010 Page DuBois * 2008–2009

Elaine Pagels Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnost ...

* 2007–2008 Mary Beard * 2006–2007 Daniel Mendelsohn * 2005–2006

Jacques Rancière Jacques Rancière (; born 10 June 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis. After co-authoring ' ...

* 2004–2005 Andrew Ford * 2003–2004

Steven Feld Steven Feld (born August 20, 1949) is an American ethnomusicologist, anthropologist, and linguist, who worked for many years with the Kaluli ( Bosavi) people of Papua New Guinea. He earned a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991. Early life Feld was born ...

* 2002–2003

Josiah Ober Josiah Ober is an American historian of ancient Greece and classical political theorist. He is Tsakopoulos- Kounalakis Professor in honor of Constantine Mitsotakis, and professor of classics and political science, at Stanford University. His te ...

* 2001–2002 Ian Hacking * 2000–2001 Simon Goldhill * 1999–2000

David Shulman David Shulman (November 12, 1912 – October 30, 2004) was an American lexicographer and cryptographer. He contributed many early usages to the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and is listed amon"Readers and contributors from collections" for the se ...

* 1998–1999 Joan E. DeJean * 1997–1998

Mary Poovey Mary Louise Poovey is an American cultural historian and literary critic whose work focuses on the Victorian Era. She is currently Samuel Rudin University Professor in the Humanities at New York University, and Director of the Institute for th ...

* 1996–1997 Peter Brown * 1995–1996 Irene J. Winter * 1994–1995 Charles Segal * 1993–1994

Friedrich Kittler Friedrich A. Kittler (June 12, 1943 – October 18, 2011) was a literary scholar and a media theorist. His works relate to media, technology, and the military. Biography Friedrich Adolf Kittler was born in 1943 in Rochlitz in Saxony. His fami ...

* 1992–1993 Gary A. Tomlinson * 1991–1992

Hazel Carby Hazel Vivian Carby (born 15 January 1948 in Okehampton, Devon) is Professor Emerita of African American Studies and of American Studies. She served as Charles C & Dorathea S Dilley Professor of African American Studies & American Studies at Yal ...

* 1990–1991 Naomi Schor * 1989–1990 Natalie Zemon Davis * 1988–1989

Kenneth Dover Sir Kenneth James Dover, (11 March 1920 – 7 March 2010) was a distinguished British classical scholar and academic. He was president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1976 to 1986. In addition, he was president of the British Academy fro ...

References

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External links

Official site
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* Ian Hacking *

Peter Brown (historian) Peter Robert Lamont Brown (born 26 July 1935) is Rollins Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. He is credited with having brought coherence to the field of Late Antiquity, and is sometimes regarded as the inventor of the fiel ...

Lists of award winners, Sigmund H. Danziger Jr. Memorial Lecture in the Humanities