Professor Robert Fahrner, professor emeritus of the University of California, Davis, and longtime San Francisco resident, died on Dec. 6 at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco of an AIDS-related condition. At his request, no memorial service will be held. Appointed chair of the dramatic art department at UC Davis in 1972 as an assistant professor, he held that position for 22 years, setting a record as the longest-serving chair in the history of the campus. During this period, for three years, he was also associate dean of the College of Letters and Science. He was promoted to full professor in 1977 and became professor emeritus in 1994. A descendant of pioneer Santa Clara Valley families (homesteaders on his mother's side, the property in the Santa Cruz mountains now a family park), Professor Fahrner attended Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose. His higher education included a master's in English from Loyola University in Los Angeles, a master's in theater from San Francisco State University and a doctorate in theater history from Yale University. He published many articles in academic journals in the United States and United Kingdom on 18th-century English theater. He also published a book on Charles Dibdin (1745-1814), in his time an immensely popular London composer and performer. More recently, with an analysis of David Garrick's "The Male Coquette," published in "Eighteenth-Century Life," he turned his attention to the subject of homophobia on the 18th-century stage, a project he abandoned when he became ill. Professor Fahrner is survived by three brothers and a sister, numerous friends and his companion, José.