Susan Gubar papers, 1975-2011

Biographical Note

Susan Gubar, the esteemed feminist scholar and critic, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944. She began teaching at Indiana University in 1973 after receiving her B.A. from the City University of New York in 1965 and her M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1968. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1972. Gubar also taught at the University of Illinois and at Tufts University. She retired from IU as Distinguished Professor Emerita of English in 2010.

Topics encompassed by Gubar's research and criticism are feminist theory and gender studies, issues related to the Holocaust, critical race studies, and the examination of the role of Judas in the history of Western civilization. During the rise of the women's movement in the 1970s, Gubar sought to develop feminist criticism into a systematic study. Gubar examined literary history, the way in which gender affects literary creativity and considered women's literature in the context of women's culture and place in society. In her publications Gubar endeavored to appeal to a larger general audience outside of academia and involve diverse voices in the critical conversation.

At IU, Gubar taught 19th and 20th century English fiction, freshman introductory courses in literature and composition and graduate courses in feminist studies and Jewish literature. One class in literary interpretation was taught at the Indiana Women's Prison in 1977. In 2006, Gubar became a Special Advisor to the Provost for the Arts and the Humanities at IU.

Gubar published a number of books and articles with her long-time collaborator, the feminist critic and poet, Sandra M. Gilbert, whom she met at IU in 1973. Gilbert retired as Distinguished Professor of English Emerita at the University of California, Davis in 2006. Their joint effort produced many pivotal works, including The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the 19th-Century Literary Imagination (1979), No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century: The War of the Words (1988), Sexchanges (1989), and Letters from the Front (1994). Gubar and Gilbert also collaborated on the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English (third edition, 2007) and received a Ms. Woman of the Year award for the publication in 1985.

In addition to a large number of articles, Gubar also authored Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture (1997), Critical Condition: Feminism at the Turn of the Century (2000), Poetry After Auschwitz: Remembering What One Never Knew (2003), Rooms of Our Own (2006), and Judas: A Biography (2009). Gubar worked extensively as an editor; among her edited works is the first annotated edition of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (2005).

Gubar won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Award for The Madwoman in the Attic . At IU, Gubar was awarded an AMOCO Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1986 and a President's Medal for Excellence in 2010. In 2011 she became a faculty fellow of the American Philosophical Society.

Gubar's husband, Donald J. Gray, retired as Professor Emeritus and Culbertson Chair Emeritus of English at IU in 1998. Susan was previously married to Edward Gubar, Director, Publications and Undergraduate Grant Program, Hutton Honors College at IU. Prior to his work with the Hutton Honors College, Edward Gubar was a faculty member in the School of Journalism for more than twenty years. Susan and Edward had two daughters, Molly (Marah) and Simone.