Sharon Marcus (born May 19, 1966) is an American academic. She is currently the Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. She specializes in nineteenth-century British and French literature and culture, and teaches courses on the 19th-century novel in England and France, particularly in relation to the history of urbanism and architecture; gender and sexuality studies; narrative theory; and 19th-century theater and performance. Marcus has received

Fulbright The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of ...

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

, and ACLS fellowships, and a Gerry Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award at Columbia. She is one of the senior editors of ''Public Culture'', as well as a founding editor and Fiction Review Editor of ''Public Books''.

Early life and education

Marcus was born on May 19, 1966 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. She received her B.A. from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

and her Ph.D. from the

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

Humanities Center.

Career

Marcus is the author of'' Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London'' (University of California Press, 1999), which received an honorable mention for the MLA Scaglione Prize for best book in comparative literature, and ''Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England'' (Princeton: 2007). ''Between Women'' has been translated into

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

and won the

Perkins Prize Perkins is a surname derived from the Anglo-Saxon corruption of the kin of Pierre (from Pierre kin to Pierrekin to Perkins), introduced into England by the Norman Conquest. It is found throughout mid- and southern England. Another derivation com ...

for best study of narrative, the Albion prize for best book on Britain after 1800, the Alan Bray Memorial award for best book in queer studies, and a Lambda Literary award for best book in LGBT studies. With Stephen Best, she edited a special issue of ''Representations'' on "The Way We Read Now" that has been important within the growing field, in literary criticism and cultural studies, of

postcritique In literary criticism and cultural studies, postcritique is the attempt to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism. Such methods have been characterized as a ...

. Before joining Columbia in 2003, Marcus taught for many years at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Personal life

Marcus was married to writer

Ellis Avery Ellis Avery (born Elisabeth Atwood; October 25, 1972 – February 15, 2019) was an American writer. She won two Stonewall Book Awards (the only author to have done so), one in 2008 for her debut novel ''The Teahouse Fire'' and one in 2013 for her ...

until the latter's death in 2019.

Publications

Books

* * *

Articles

*"Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention" (1992)

References

Sharon Marcus papers, 1989-2016, Pembroke Center Archives, Brown University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marcus, Sharon Living people Columbia University faculty Brown University alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni LGBT academics LGBT women University of California, Berkeley faculty 1966 births