Jane Marcus


Jane Marcus was a pioneering feminist literary scholar, specializing in women writers of the Modernist era, but especially in the social and political context of their writings. Focusing on Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, and Nancy Cunard, among many others, she devised groundbreaking analyses of Woolf's writings, upending a generation of criticism that ignored feminist, pacifist, and socialist themes in much of Woolf's work and critique of imperialism and bourgeois society. Marcus's understanding of Woolf's place within the larger context of English literature has become prevailing wisdom today in the fields affected by her theorization and research, despite the controversial nature of her positions when they were originally formulated and how much opposition she garnered from earlier scholars and critics.
Illuminating aspects of their work that had been overlooked or undervalued, Marcus was also an expert and groundbreaking scholar in relation to other key figures of the 20th century, such as Dame Rebecca West, the British composer Ethel Smyth, and Nancy Cunard. During the course of her research on West, Marcus and West became friends in the last years of West's life, and the two shared a passion for women's writings and women's perspectives, as well as for controversy, outspokenness, and original thinking from a feminist perspective. The Jane Marcus Collection is newly housed at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, and includes manuscripts of her books, talks, correspondence and research files. Her correspondence with Rebecca West as well as the poet Adrienne Rich are of particular interest to scholars working in the fields of feminist theory, gender studies, modernism, and women's history, among others.

Education

Jane Marcus did her undergraduate A.B. cum laude in English, 1960, at Radcliffe College, her M.A. at Brandeis University, 1965, and her Ph.D. at Northwestern University, 1973.

Appointments (selected list)

Marcus was a Distinguished Professor of English at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center, CUNY, whose faculty she joined in 1986. Marcus also taught at the University of Texas, Austin and helped found women's studies programs at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Texas. She was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 1993. She was an IRADAC Fellow CCNY 2002-2003; March–April 1997, Rockefeller Bellagio Residency, Fall 1996; Camargo Foundation Fellowship, Cassis, France, 1995-6; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Harry Ransome Humanities Research Center, University of Texas ; 1994-5 Visiting Fellow Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis; Visiting fellow, Clare Hall Cambridge University, 1993-4, Scholar Incentive Award, The City College of New York, 1993 ; Eisner Fellow, CCNY (Strasbourg, France, 1991-3; Coordinator of Women's Studies Certificate Program, CUNY, 1991-1994; 1990 Iris Howard Regents Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Texas.

Personal life

Marcus was of Irish Catholic descent. Born in St. Albans, Vermont, she grew up in the Boston area. She was the mother of Lisa Marcus, Professor of English, Pacific Lutheran University; Jason Marcus; and the novelist Ben Marcus and is portrayed in his book Notable American Women; through him, her daughter-in-law is writer Heidi Julavits. Her husband, Michael Marcus, is a Professor Emeritus at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York in the Department of Mathematics.

Works

Books