Our former and beloved colleague, Michael Seidel, passed away on March 27, 2025, at his home in Durham, NC. He was 81 years old. He earned his PhD at UCLA in 1970 and taught at Yale before accepting a tenured position in our department in 1977. He taught at Columbia for 30 years, serving as chair, and retired in 2007 as the Jesse and George Siegel Professor of the Humanities. He was the author of books on James Joyce, Daniel Defoe, and satire, as well as two others on his lifelong passion, baseball: Streak, and Ted Williams: A Baseball Life.
