Remembering Nicole Gervasio
It is with great sadness that we announce the sudden death from cardiac arrest of our student, friend and colleague Nicole Gervasio. Nicole left a profound imprint on so many parts of Columbia and the world. Everyone who knew her learned something from her unique way of being in the world. Nicole was a brilliant and inquiring graduate student, a beloved prize-winning teacher and mentor, a talented intern and administrator, and a creative participant in the activities of ENCL, ISSG, CSSD, the Writing Program, SOF/Heyman, Barnard, Public Humanities, and more. She was a beloved and loyal friend. And she was crazy about her dogs.
A first-generation college student, Nicole graduated from Bryn Mawr in 2010 with High Honors and defended her dissertation “Arts of the Impossible: Violence, Trauma & Erasure in the Global South” in 2018. While at Columbia, she completed a Graduate Certification in Gender and Sexuality Studies and developed a course on the Literature of Human Rights in the Writing Program. She co-founded the “Diaspora, Race, & Empire Colloquium” in ENCL; was a Public Humanities Fellow at Humanities, New York; an Editorial Assistant at Public Books; she taught Literature Humanities at the Taconic Correctional Facility; and she volunteered and built curricula with Girls Write Now. Nicole was an active and creative participant in the transnational Women Mobilizing Memory project at the Center for the Study of Social Difference for which, with other graduate students, she developed a Gender, Race and Memory Walk through Harlem. Nicole won two prestigious teaching awards: the Columbia Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by a graduate student, and the Core Preceptor Meyerson Award for Teaching Excellence in Literature Humanities, which she was awarded twice.
After graduation, Nicole was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pembroke Center at Brown University where she examined paradigms of Human Rights and their current usefulness. She then served as an ACLS/Mellon Public Fellow at PEN America, where she was one of the organizers of the PEN World Voices Festival. Nicole returned to Columbia for three years to teach Literature Humanities and, two years ago, she assumed a position teaching High School literature classes at Grace Church School. All the while, she continued to write, publish and give papers at conferences.
Nicole’s many talents and accomplishments, her dedication and advocacy, her enthusiasm and skepticism, her colorful outfits and genuine laughter, her fierce commitments to justice and equality –all these are truly difficult to summarize. She is deeply mourned by her partner Celia Turner, her family, her extensive and vibrant community of close friends, and the beloved canine companions who accompanied her everywhere.
If you would like to donate something in Nicole’s name, please consider Res-Q-Pets where she and her beloved Penny found each other; Girls Write Now; or Word Up Bookstore.