Hartman spent most of his career in the comparative literature department at Yale University, where he also founded the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.
[1] In 1939, he left Germany for England as an unaccompanied Kindertransport child refugee, sent away by his family to escape the Nazi regime.
Upon their arrival to the United States, his mother changed the family surname to "Hartman" to obscure its German origin.
[1] Hartman attended Queens College, City University of New York and received his PhD from Yale.
His work explores the nature of the creative imagination, as well as the interrelationship of literature and literary commentary.