I was very sorry to hear of the recent death of one my teachers, Jeremy Zwellng. I took a great books course with him my first semester at Wesleyan. He was a rigorous teacher who also had tremendous rapport with the small class of students he lead in intense discussions. At the same time he was charming and truly humorous. He had a big laugh.
He was a keen critic of our papers and the comments he gave me (and a couple of early Cs), taught me to work harder, think more deeply, pay closer attention to the texts, and write more clearly.
(To this day I have some memory of papers I wrote for him and of how much I struggled to go deeper when re-writing them for him.)
Most importantly, he taught great books not as pieces of history but as brilliant literature from which we might be able to develop some wisdom, both ethical and spiritual.
I also recall some charming dinners with him from to time at East College.
I always wanted to take his course on the Hebrew Bible but could not fit in. But I thought of him and went back to my notes from classes with him when I began to teach the Bible.
All these years later, I think of him with respect, fondness, and love. In just that one 15 week class, he had a dramatic and immensely positive effect on my life.