Gubar, Susan 1944–

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Gubar, Susan 1944–

(Susan David Gubar)

PERSONAL:

Born November 30, 1944. Education: City College of the City University of New York, B.A., 1965; University of Michigan, M.A., 1968; University of Iowa, Ph.D., 1972.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, Indiana University—Bloomington, 442 Ballantine Hall, 1020 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405-7103. E-mail—gubar@indiana.edu.

CAREER:

University of Illinois, faculty member, prior to 1973; Indiana University—Bloomington, Bloomington, member of faculty, 1973—, currently distinguished professor of English and women's studies.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pulitzer Prize nomination and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, outstanding book of criticism (with Sandra M. Gilbert), both 1979, for The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination; Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1981-82 and 1994-95; Pushcart Prize, 1982, for story "Blessings in Disguise"; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1983-84; Indiana Committee for the Humanities Summer Fellowship, 1985; named one of the "people who made a difference," USA Today, 1985; "Woman of the Year" citation, Ms. magazine, 1986, for The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English; Amoco Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, Indiana University, 1986; Townsend Harris Medal, Alumni Association of the City College of New York, 1988; Distinguished Scholar Award from Indiana University's Office of Women's Affairs, 1991, and College of Arts and Sciences, 1992; Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, 1999; Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellowship, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, 2001-02; Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award, 2002; Faculty Mentor Award, Indiana University Graduate and Professional Student Organization, 2003; Indiana University College Arts and Humanities Institute Fellowship, 2005.

WRITINGS:

(With Sandra M. Gilbert) The Madwoman in the Attic: A Study of Women and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (nonfiction), Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1979, 2nd edition with new introduction by the authors, 2000.

(With Sandra M. Gilbert) No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century (nonfiction), Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), Volume 1: The War of the Words, 1988, Volume 2: Sexchanges, 1989, Volume 3: Letters from the Front, 1994.

(With Sandra M. Gilbert) Masterpiece Theatre: An Academic Melodrama (literary satire), Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1995.

Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture (nonfiction), Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Critical Condition: Feminism at the Turn of the Century (nonfiction), Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Poetry after Auschwitz: Remembering What One Never Knew (nonfiction), Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 2003.

Rooms of Our Own (novel), University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Feminism Besides Itself, edited by Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman, 1995, and Cambridge Companion to Jewish-American Literature, edited by Michael Kramer and Hana Wirth-Nesher, 2003. Contributor to periodicals and journals, including New York Times Book Review, Modern Fiction Studies, Kenyon Review, and Feminist Studies.

EDITOR

(With Sandra M. Gilbert, and coauthor of introduction) Shakespeare's Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets (nonfiction), Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1979.

(With Sandra M. Gilbert) The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English (literary anthology), W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1985, 2nd edition, 1996, 3rd edition, 2007.

(With Sandra M. Gilbert) The Female Imagination and the Modernist Aesthetic (nonfiction), Gordon & Breach Science Publishers (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Joan Hoff) For Adult Users Only: The Dilemma of Violent Pornography (nonfiction), Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1989.

(With Jonathan Kamholtz) English Inside and Out: The Places of Literary Criticism (nonfiction), Routledge & Kegan Paul (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Sandra M. Gilbert and Diana O'Hehir) Mothersongs: Poems for, by, and about Mothers (poetry), W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

(And author of introduction and notes) Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (essay), Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2005.

Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader (nonfiction), W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Literary theorist Susan Gubar, along with her frequent collaborator Sandra M. Gilbert, has produced a number of groundbreaking works of literary criticism that focus on the work of women writers. Their 1979 The Madwoman in the Attic: A Study of Women and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, for instance, is considered revolutionary by some critics. Gubar also has written numerous books on her own, including studies of race in American culture and of poetry on the Holocaust, as well as fiction informed by feminism.

In The Madwoman in the Attic, Gubar and Gilbert argue that nineteenth-century women writers were forced to write within the confines of a male-dominated literary tradition that equated the pen with the penis. Viewed as trespassers in the domain of male writers, women who took up the pen risked being condemned as unfeminine. At the same time, female authors—such as Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Mary Shelley, George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), and Emily Dickinson—who attempted to defy the male tradition or explore a new viewpoint received ridicule as "lady novelists" or "female poetasters." Consequently, maintain the authors, women writers became both fearful that they lacked true artistic expression and angry because they felt trapped within the powerful patriarchal structure. Repressing their rage and fear, women writers of the nineteenth century began to subvert the male tradition in which they wrote, clandestinely developing a literary style distinctly their own.

Several reviewers found the book a breakthough. LeAnne Schreiber noted in the New York Times Book Review that in developing a "complex and compelling understanding of the subterfuges that have made the work of women such as Emily Brontë and Mary Shelley seem puzzling and odd," Gubar and Gilbert present "the first persuasive case for the existence of a distinctly female imagination." Similarly, Carolyn G. Heilbrun, writing in the Washington Post Book World, deemed The Madwoman in the Attic "a pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again." New Leader contributor Phoebe Pettingell labeled the authors' "close textual readings … insightful and valuable."

Another joint effort with Gilbert, The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English, which they edited, also was a major step forward, in the opinion of some critics. The book "is a landmark not only in feminism but in the study of literature," reported Laura Shapiro in Newsweek. She said the book makes "possible, for the first time, a realistic perspective on literary achievement." The tome, which "showcases a wealth of acknowledged treasures," in Shapiro's words, focuses on the work of women writers throughout history. Shapiro added, "Many of [the editors'] choices have no bearing on feminism as such, but all of them reflect the editors' belief, expressed in their introduction, that women's writing reveals a relationship to the world that is necessarily different from men's." Julia Epstein observed in the Washington Post Book World that The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women "resoundingly endorses a centuries-old tradition of women's writing and a matrilineal evolution of styles and subjects. Its publication, therefore, bears witness to the coming of age of feminist literary scholarship."

In addition, Epstein remarked, the anthology "also redraws boundaries, shifting the usual period designations in a way better suited to women's history, considering a range of genres often dismissed (letters, diaries, polemics) and broadening the English-speaking world to embrace geographically diverse writers from India to New Zealand, Canada to Australia." In the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Diane Middlebrook described the book as "a capacious and readable volume…. It is encyclopedic." She further explained: "Organized chronologically, this collection demonstrates that women have participated vigorously in every period, trend, fashion, experiment and genre of writing in English. The editors themselves, however, are adroitly contemporary in their own outlook." Middlebrook concluded that "the most obvious strength of this anthology, though, is its representation of modern and contemporary female writers."

The War of the Words, the first volume of Gubar and Gilbert's No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, was another thought-provoking work, some reviewers remarked. It is "a thoroughly provocative (and provocatively thorough) revisioning of the genesis of modernism," related Janice Kulyk Keefer in the Toronto Globe and Mail. She continued: "The central premise of No Man's Land—that the radical departures that characterize such classics as The Waste Land, Ulysses and The Waves derive from a context of sexual as well as social, political and economic conflict—is developed by means of a thematic overview of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century texts that showcase women's attempts to assert their right not to primacy but to a place in the predominantly masculine world of letters." Kulyk Keefer admired the authors' treatment of misogyny and their attention to female linguistic issues, yet she found "problematic" their attempts to define what they term "the female affiliation complex," a female-oriented historical literary tradition. She concluded that Gubar and Gilbert "have produced a challenging and engaging introduction to a central feature of the cultural movement that continues to shape our century."

In the Washington Post Book World, Wendy Lesser described The War of the Words as a "fascinating, controversial, and ambiguous study of the post-Victorian period." The critic questioned both the authors' "specific interpretation of texts" and their perception of "the extent to which men as a class have banded together as a literary mafia." She admired their writing, however, saying: "Their prose is fluid and accessible, yet intel- ligent and pointed; they mingle analytic remarks with expository summaries in a way that shows both respect and consideration for the reader." Barbara Hardy commented in the Times Literary Supplement that "No Man's Land figures a crisis of male impotence and aggression, a woman's projected utopia, and the territory of contemporary conflicts and confusions. The revisionary word-play acts out a central theme, that of men and women struggling both with and for language." She added: "Although it sprawls through time, space and hosts of examples, The War of the Words is not really a large, loose, baggy monster, but sharply attentive to the business of illustrating extremes of anxiety and confidence, aggression and submission, and making them into a pattern."

Sexchanges, the second volume of No Man's Land, "is not so much a sequel to The War of the Words as a supplement to it, another layer of brush strokes on a still unfinished canvas," according to New York Times Book Review contributor Walter Kendrick. Kendrick commented that if No Man's Land as a whole "achieves its … goal, it will set the direction of feminist criticism for the next generation of students and scholars." The reviewer added that "success seems likely, because Ms. Gilbert and Ms. Gubar write with facility and have a knack for subsuming complex problems under easily memorable labels."

Letters from the Front, the third volume in the No Man's Land series, covers the period beginning in the 1930s. Analyzing the works of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Marianne Moore, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Zora Neale Hurston, Gubar and Gilbert "read women's 20th-century literary productions as letters from the shifting fronts of the ‘sex war,’" reported Mark Hussey in the New York Times Book Review. While commending parts of the volume, Hussey thought that the authors' "tendency to see everything in terms of war and conflict often makes for simplistic analysis." Helen Carr, reviewing Letters from the Front in the New Statesman and Society, reacted similarly, remarking that "much of the critical account is a relentlessly reductive or strained reading of texts to wrench out images of violence and prove their point." While declaring that the volume "has nothing like the panache and drive" of The Madwoman in the Attic, Carr claimed that No Man's Land "helps to make clear the rich and varied contribution made by women writers to the modernist movement."

Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture is a solo effort by Gubar that looks at how white authors and artists, particularly those of the 1920s, embraced black culture, to some extent blurring racial lines but also continuing to marginalize blacks as "the Other." At the same time, black writers asserted themselves and produced the racially aware literature of the Harlem Renaissance, "boldly exploring the vagaries of color and identity as never before," as Nation reviewer Gene Seymour put it. The book has an "exuberant, full-contact absorption in the details and lore of transracial adventure in literature, art and the movies," Seymour added.

Gubar's Poetry after Auschwitz: Remembering What One Never Knew explores English-language poetry written in response to the Holocaust, particularly by poets who did not experience it. The title is a reference to writer Theodor W. Adorno's statement that "to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." Nevertheless, poets have produced a huge body of Holocaust-related work, often seeing themselves as "proxy-witnesses" for the genocide's victims. Analyzing the work of such poets as Sylvia Plath, Denise Levertov, Gerald Stern, and Jason Sommer, she demonstrates that while "proxy-witnesses" have their limitations, their efforts provide a crucial means of empathizing with those who suffered in the Holocaust.

Some critics praised Gubar as providing a broad sampling of poetry and offering valid insights into its value. "She alternates effectively between sustained readings of selected poems and brief accounts of many others," related Michael Rothberg in Biography. "This strategy allows her to range widely without slighting the formal properties of verse, and to bring to our attention a mix of better and lesser known poets." Brian M. Reed, writing in the Modern Language Quarterly, noted that she gives "extended, sensitive attention to an impressive number of poets and poems" and "never allows a single poet to set the agenda." Rothberg added that her book "speaks most effectively to the issue of literature's capacity and responsibility in the face of human-made catastrophes. In insisting that poetry is an empathetic art that can and must be practiced across the caesurae of divergent historical experiences and social identities, Gubar contributes to the renewal of a properly humanistic criticism." Reed summed up the work as "an extraordinary achievement by one of the leading figures in the profession … a lucid, learned, wise book," and concluded: "Like the poets she honors, Gubar demonstrates an unswerving commitment to "‘the imagination’ as ‘an instrument of moral good.’"

Gubar's novel Rooms of Our Own pays tribute to Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, in which Woolf discussed the personal and financial independence she felt women writers needed. (Gubar has edited and annotated an edition of this Woolf work, a lengthy essay with fictional elements.) Using a style similar to Woolf's and telling the story through a first-person narrator—college professor Mary Beton (a name used in Woolf's work)—Gubar deals with the fact that while women enjoy much more freedom than they did in Woolf's era, they still find that domestic responsibilities limit the time they have to devote to their creative efforts. Spread over the course of an academic year, the narrative also satirizes office politics as practiced in higher education. Some reviewers found the book to be a perceptive look at contemporary women's concerns. Martha Stephenson, writing in the Library Journal, called it "astute" and "full of descriptive and explicative detail." Martha Miller of the Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide deemed the satirical scenes to be "entertaining and on target" and added that the story is ultimately optimistic: "Gubar's narrator ends with some hope. The door has inched open and ‘the next generation must have a chance for something better.’"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 145, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

American Literary History, winter, 1999, Jannifer DeVere Brody, review of Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture, p. 736.

American Literature, March, 1980, Annette Kolodny, review of The Madwoman in the Attic: A Study of Women and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, pp. 128-132.

Atlantic, August, 1985, Phyllis Rose, "Women Writers and Feminist Critics," pp. 88-91.

Belles Lettres, spring, 1995, Roberta Rubenstein, "Altering the Critical Landscape," pp. 30-31.

Biography, summer, 2004, Michael Rothberg, review of Poetry after Auschwitz: Remembering What One Never Knew, p. 660.

Christian Science Monitor, February 11, 1980, Valerie Miner, review of The Madwoman in the Attic, p. B12.

CLA Journal, March, 2002, review of Racechanges, p. 405.

Comparative Literature, spring, 1991, Margot Norris, review of No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1: The War of the Words, pp. 199-201.

Contemporary Sociology, July, 1990, "The Fate of Women Writers," pp. 511-513.

Criticism: Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, fall, 1989, Anne Herrmann, review of No Man's Land, Volume 2: Sexchanges, pp. 507-512.

Emerge, May, 1997, Valerie Smith, review of Racechanges, p. 68.

English Language Notes, September, 1990, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, review of The War of the Words, pp. 73-77.

Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, March 1, 2007, Martha Miller, "Whose Room Is It, Anyway?," p. 40.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), February 13, 1988, Janice Kulyk Keefer, review of The War of the Words.

Journal of American Studies, August, 1999, Susan E. Rogers, review of Racechanges, p. 368.

Journal of Communication, winter, 1990, Thelma McCormack, review of For Adult Users Only: The Dilemma of Violent Pornography, p. 185.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, July, 1989, Kathleen Blake, reviews of The War of the Words and Sexchanges, pp. 454-457; October, 1995, Kathleen Blake, review of Sexchanges, pp. 591-596; April, 1996, Kathleen Blake, review of No Man's Land, Volume 3: Letters from the Front, pp. 269-271.

Journal of Gender Studies, July, 2001, Katie McGowran, review of Critical Condition: Feminism at the Turn of the Century, p. 221.

Journal of Modern Literature, spring, 1999, Irving Malin, review of Racechanges, p. 441.

Library Journal, December, 2002, Ulrich Baer, review of Poetry after Auschwitz, p. 126; September 1, 2006, Martha Stephenson, review of Rooms of Our Own, p. 145.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 12, 1985, Diane Middlebrook, review of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English, p. 1.

Modern Fiction Studies, winter, 1989, Elizabeth Boyd Thompson, review of Sexchanges, p. 867; winter, 1998, Gwen Bergner, review of Racechanges.

Modern Language Quarterly, September, 2006, Brian M. Reed, review of Poetry after Auschwitz, p. 411.

Ms., February, 1980, Louise Bernikow, review of The Madwoman in the Attic, p. 39; January, 1986, Laura Shapiro, "Gilbert and Gubar," interview, p. 59.

Nation, July 2, 1988, Julie Abraham, "Modern Romancers," pp. 27-28; May 12, 1997, Gene Seymour, review of Racechanges, p. 47.

New England Quarterly, March, 1984, David Porter, "Dickinson's Readers," pp. 106-110.

New Leader, February 25, 1980, Phoebe Pettingell, review of The Madwoman in the Attic, pp. 16-17.

New Republic, March 10, 1986, Denis Donoghue, "A Criticism of One's Own," pp. 30-34.

New Statesman, April 1, 1988, Jenny Turner, "Very Much Afraid of Virginia Woolf," pp. 24-25.

New Statesman and Society, October 7, 1994, Helen Carr, review of Letters from the Front, p. 45.

Newsweek, July 15, 1985, Laura Shapiro, review of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, p. 65.

New York Review of Books, December 20, 1979, Rosemary Dinnage, "Re-creating Eve," pp. 6, 8; April 27, 2000, Kwame Anthony Appiah, review of Critical Condition, p. 42.

New York Times Book Review, December 9, 1979, LeAnne Schreiber, review of The Madwoman in the Attic, February 19, 1989, Walter Kendrick, review of Sexchanges, p. 9; November 6, 1994, Mark Hussey, review of Letters from the Front, p. 27.

NWSA Journal, spring, 2001, Joyce Y. Karpay, review of Critical Condition, p. 189.

Philological Quarterly, summer, 1980, Katherine Frank, review of The Madwoman in the Attic, pp. 381-383.

Publishers Weekly, April 7, 1989, Penny Kaganoff, review of For Adult Users Only, p. 135; March 27, 1995, review of Mothersongs: Poems for, by, and about Mothers, p. 79; January 31, 2000, review of Critical Condition, p. 97; September 11, 2006, review of Rooms of Our Own, p. 46.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 1997, review of Racechanges, p. 137; November, 2007, review of Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader.

Review of English Studies, August, 1982, Penny Boumelha, review of The Madwoman in the Attic, pp. 345-347.

Shofar, fall, 2004, Alicia Ostriker, review of Poetry after Auschwitz.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, winter, 1991, Susan Roth; winter, 1997, Suzanne Juhasz, review of For Adult Users Only, p. 379; spring, 2000, Dana D. Nelson, review of Racechanges, p. 912; autumn, 2001, Alys Eve Weinbaum, review of Critical Condition, p. 294.

Studies in the Novel, spring, 1989, Katherine Fishburn, review of The War of the Words, pp. 104-107; winter, 1990, Katherine Fishburn, review of Sexchanges, pp. 472-476.

Times Literary Supplement, August 8, 1980, Rosemary Ashton, "The Strongly Female Tradition," p. 901; June 3, 1988, Barbara Hardy, review of The War of the Words, p. 621; June 2, 1989, Terry Castle, "Pursuing the Amazonian Dream," pp. 607-608; January 12, 1990, Anthony Clare, review of For Adult Users Only, p. 32; May 28, 1993, John Sutherland, review of English Inside and Out: The Places of Literary Criticism, p. 11; June 30, 1995, Gillian Beer, review of No Man's Land, pp. 6-7; June 14, 1996, Elaine Showalter, "Miss Marple at the MLA," p. 9; March 17, 2000, Lorna Sage, "Learning New Titles," p. 26.

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, spring, 1989, Pamela L. Caughie, "The (En)gendering of Literary History"; spring, 1989, Celia Patterson, review of Sexchanges, pp. 128-130; fall, 1995, Ann Ardis, review of Letters from the Front, pp. 366-369; spring, 1999, Anne Stavney, review of Racechanges, pp. 124-125; spring, 2007, Suzette Henke, review of Rooms of Our Own, pp. 145-147.

Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 1981, Margaret Miller, "Angels and Monsters of Feminist Fiction," pp. 358-361.

Washington Post Book World, November 25, 1979, Carolyn G. Heilbrun, review of The Madwoman in the Attic, pp. 4, 6; June 2, 1985, Julia Epstein, review of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, p. 10; January 17, 1988, Wendy Lesser, review of The War of the Words, p. 4; July 13, 1997, Gayle Pemberton, "Minstrels and Their Masks," p. 4.

Women and Language, spring, 2001, review of The Madwoman in the Attic, p. 39.

Women's Review of Books, June, 2000, Maureen T. Reddy, review of Critical Condition, p. 17.

Yale Review, April, 1992, Sara Suleri, review of For Adult Users Only, p. 197.