Professor Marianne Giordani

John Jay will be hosting a memorial for Marianne Giordani on December 10th, 4:00 - 6:00 P.M. in the Faculty and Staff Dining Room, second floor of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 524 West 59th Street (between 10th and 11th Aves.)

Please note, access to the campus is restricted due to COVID-19 safety procedures:
 
• Everyone must wear a mask on campus.

• Guests who are not members of the John Jay community must provide either proof of vaccination or a negative Covid PCR test that is less than 7 days old.*

Non-member guests may send their names to Jay Gates ([email protected]) by December 9 so that Public Safety will have their names on-hand and be able more readily to direct them to the event (this is suggested but not necessary to attend).

*N.B. to be considered vaccinated one must be two weeks past the second dose in a two-shot series, or past the one time dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccination. 

Dear friends:

I write to share a devastating piece of news. Our beloved longtime colleague Marianne Giordani died on Tuesday, November 2 at NYU Langone Hospital.  I don't yet have any information about what happened except that her death was not COVID related.  

Marianne received her PhD in English in 2004 from the CUNY Graduate Center and taught an amazing and wonderful range of classes in the literature of the long eighteenth century for our department.  I think especially of her Satire and Sensibility class, which was an indispensable part of our curriculum for many years, and of her much-loved seminar on William Blake.  

Most notable of all her classes, perhaps, was an unusual and extremely popular seminar titled Poetics of the Warrior: Ancient Through Early Modern Heroic Poetry, which attracted students from many different backgrounds but spoke especially to our student veterans in General Studies (this story gives some of the feel of that class). An important part of Marianne’s calling was to work with veteran combatants as they transitioned to civilian life, on campus as teacher and advisor and off campus with associations such as the John Jay Veterans Association, Veterans Mental Health Coalition of NYC and Fordham’s Edge4Vets.


I am stunned to think that I won't see Marianne’s beautiful bright smile again in the halls of Philosophy.  Her intelligence, warmth and real kindness will be terribly missed by all of her students and colleagues.  I am certain that there will be a memorial, and I'll share those details when we have them.

Jenny Davidson
Chair, Department of English and Comparative Literature
Columbia University