Remembering Professor John Campion Hirsh

John Hirsh taught in the English Department at Georgetown University for 53 years where he specialised in early medieval literature and the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. Over those years he made several extended visits to Oxford for research, staying in Campion Hall on a number of occasions including a year in 2014 when he worked on manuscripts of 14th and 15th century lyrics, and returning most recently in 2021 to speak on Chaucer’s God as part of a series on Christian Literary Imagination. John might have had special appreciation of Campion Hall as his father, who was born in England and was an undergraduate at Oxford, chose the name Campion for his son’s middle name. 

His scholarship was combined with a deep commitment to social justice demonstrated by over 35 years of work with Sursum Corda in Washington, an urban housing project in one of the most deprived parts of the city. As well as supporting young people from the area into education John led a programme that encouraged students from Georgetown University to be involved in community-based literacy activities. Former students joined people who had been mentored in sharing appreciation for the ways their lives had been transformed by John’s commitment to this work.

A generous gift from John’s estate will enable Campion Hall to improve the library’s cataloguing and online lending facilities and will strengthen our support for students and researchers for many years to come. It’s a lovely gift from someone who was a long-standing friend of the Hall and all the more appreciated given the range of Professor Hirsh’s interests in scholarship and in social justice.