Thomas Walsh

Thomas Walsh was a Lecturer in the Celtic Studies Program from 2010 until his death. Born in San Francisco on August 21, 1950, in San Francisco, he received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in from UC Berkeley (1973, 1977, 1990). After completing his doctorate, he taught at Occidental College, where he received tenure, before returning to the Bay Area to teach at Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley. His monograph, entitled Fighting Words and Feuding Words: Anger and the Homeric Poems, was published in 2005. He also published and presented papers on a variety of topics, primarily on Homer and ancient Greek literature, but also on Old Irish poetry as well as more theoretical investigations of concepts of authorship and literary value in antiquity. He read deeply in multiple languages, including Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, German, Irish, Sanskrit, Hittite, and Akkadian.

As a member of the Berkeley campus community since his graduate work, Tom was an active participant in various campus groups studying older Indo-European languages, including the Homer club, and later the Greek Reading Group. He was a regular co-organizer of the California Celtic Conference and helped to host the Celtic Studies Association of North America’s conference at Berkeley.

Tom’s broad and deep erudition made him a unique teacher in a wide range of areas. At Occidental, he taught Classics. At Berkeley, he taught Irish literature and Celtic culture classes. His love of the material always shone through his teaching. He had no need of computer visuals to attract student attention; “chalk and talk” and paper handouts more than sufficed for connection. He also taught what was surely one of the largest Old Irish language classes in North America—to rave reviews from the ten students, completely defying common “knowledge” of the impenetrable difficulty of that language. (This feat alone might justify the Homeric kleos aphthiton.) He stepped in and taught Modern Irish for a semester as well when the Program needed staffing. And he had a deep love of the writing process and interest in teaching writing. Reading and Composition classes are an unwelcome requirement to many students, but Tom’s students consistently said he turned that around and made them enjoy growing as writers.

Tom’s kindness and generosity as a teacher and colleague was a gold standard—colleagues who shared his office or asked him questions in the hallway were awed by his knowledge and his willingness to share. Myriah Williams, a Lecturer who focuses on Welsh language and literature, remembers Tom as “a kind and generous colleague”; she continues, “I could tell from overhearing office hour meetings that his students both really liked him and valued his advice. I did too! He was a calming presence in the office, one I was especially grateful for in my early days of teaching. He was always open to sharing his thoughts on teaching and tips for engaging students, and never turned me away when I needed advice or just a sympathetic ear to talk to.”

And when he was part of a conference organizing team, he did not just chair sessions: he was always the last to leave the site, never leaving the cleanup to others. He is deeply missed by the campus community, including the network of scholars of Celtic and older Indo-European languages. As Irish traditional wisdom has it, “His like will not be seen again.”

Tom is survived by his wife Laura Watkins; their son Newton Watkins Walsh, and his partner Ajax Smith; and his brother Ray Walsh.

Eve Sweetser
Eric Falci