\u201cShe made so many students\u2019 lives so much richer. She was a steadfast advocate for ways to fully engage students and faculty, and displayed civility and compassion for everyone she met,\u201d said Dr. Marguerite Rippy, Emerita Professor of Literature & Languages at Marymount, and a close colleague and friend of Dr. Bisson\u2019s for more than two decades. \u201cFor many of us, she was the first person we met at Marymount, and she recruited generations of students and faculty through the power of her gentle, incisive and complex mind. She was truly a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After earning her doctorate from Florida State University in 1969, Dr. Bisson moved to the national capital region and joined the Marymount faculty. Over the years, she held positions as Chair of the Literature & Languages department and Director of Marymount\u2019s graduate program in Humanities. Her primary field of interest was late medieval literature, particularly Chaucer and Dante studies, as well as feminist studies, especially relating to Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Her book, “Chaucer and the Late Medieval World,”<\/a> was selected by Choice<\/a> as an Outstanding Academic Book of 1998, and was described by Speculum<\/a> as a \u201csystematic and clear survey of social contexts, historical traditions and critical issues.\u201d Both the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities<\/a> and the National Endowment for the Humanities<\/a> awarded her grants for summer institutes to enrich the background of high school teachers in medieval studies. She also served as a program officer for the National Endowment for the Humanities.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cLillian was an ideal role model \u2013 a seasoned and accomplished teacher, a generous and encouraging mentor and colleague and a loyal and trusted friend. She was the glue that held our department together \u2013 under her generous leadership, we became not only colleagues but good friends,\u201d recalled Dr. Karen Waters, Emerita Professor of English at Marymount who also retired from the University in 2010. \u201cShe was the living embodiment of one of her favorite quotations from Chaucer\u2019s description of the Clerk in \u2018The Canterbury Tales\u2019 \u2013 \u2018and gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.\u2019 Lillian did both with devotion and excellence.\u201d<\/p>\n One year before her retirement from Marymount, the University ensured that Dr. Bisson\u2019s name would live on well into the future. The Bisson Lecture in the Humanities<\/a>, an annual program established in 2009, invites a distinguished scholar to campus to deliver a lecture on a topic of humanistic inquiry with broad, interdisciplinary interest. Recent lectures include Dorsey Armstrong\u2019s \u201cKing Arthur and the Knights of the Public Humanities: Literature in the Classroom, on Guided Tours and on Screen,\u201d Brigitte Fielder\u2019s \u201cAntislavery Children\u2019s Literature and Twenty-First Century Antiracism\u201d and Marlene Tromp\u2019s \u201cBloody Murder: Solving Victorian Crimes with Forensics and the Humanities.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The year following the establishment of the Bisson Lecture in the Humanities, Dr. Susan Fay \u2013 another Emerita Professor at Marymount \u2013 delivered remarks dedicated to Dr. Bisson at the Faculty Recognition Luncheon in April 2010. She reflected on various aspects of the professor\u2019s tenure \u2013 from her numerous teaching awards to her exceptional involvement on University committees and time as President of the Marymount Faculty Association. She also remembered how Dr. Bisson\u2019s actions always spoke louder than words when it came to the many acts of kindness she showed to her MU friends and colleagues.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving called me on the phone to express her condolences on a death in our family, she not only arranged to have my classes covered so that I could attend to this crisis, she and [her husband] Art turned up on our doorstep when we returned from the funeral, casserole in hand. I knew then this wasn\u2019t your ordinary department chair,\u201d Dr. Fay told the audience. \u201cForty years is a long time to spend at an institution, and it is possible, I guess, to reach that mark quietly. Lillian\u2019s voice, however, though gentle, has been anything but quiet. Words are our stock in trade in the English department. It is particularly appropriate, then, that she has used her voice and words to help shape this institution, its programs and most importantly its students.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That influence is still being felt throughout Marymount\u2019s Literature & Languages program to this day. Current professors, many of whom have worked closely with Dr. Bisson since joining the University themselves, are mourning her loss while also remembering her legacy and the deep impact she left on them personally.<\/p>\n \u201cWe shared office space for the first four years of my time at Marymount, and I hear her soft, firm, thoughtful, patient voice in conference with students in the back of my mind. Her ability to pause, to let silence and space for reflection be there is a skill I still one day hope to gain,\u201d said Dr. Tonya-Marie Howe, Professor of Literature & Languages at Marymount. \u201cShe was full of grace, wisdom, humor and strength. Her students got the very best \u2013 a caring mentor and teacher who paid attention to each and every person as they came to her.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLillian was an incredibly selfless friend and mentor. She always had time for her students and colleagues, and whatever issue I was facing I always felt better after talking with her about it,\u201d added Dr. Holly Karapetkova, fellow Professor of Literature & Languages at Marymount. \u201cShe cared deeply for our community and made Marymount into a place that felt more like a family than a job.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dr. Bisson was laid to rest this past Sunday at St. Luke Serbian Orthodox Church<\/a> in McLean, Va. In lieu of flowers, community members are encouraged to donate to a scholarship at Marymount University in her name<\/a> or to make a memorial donation to PAX Community<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, Dr. Lillian Bisson \u2013 a professor emerita who gave 41 years of service to Marymount University and is still a revered figure within the institution\u2019s academic circles more than a decade after her retirement \u2013 passed away at the age of 80. The scholar of medieval literature, remembered well for her record […]<\/p>\n![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/marymount.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/From-1974-239x300.jpg\")
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