Modern Language Association Presents Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award to Susan Gubar

Susan Gubar, a distinguished professor emerita of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, was honored with the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award from the Modern Language Association.

Professor Gubar joined the faculty at Indiana University in 1973. Beginning her career at a time when men far outnumbered women in academia, Professor Gubar created groundbreaking works of feminist criticism that uncovered a female literary tradition previously obscured within a traditionally male literary universe.

Dr. Gubar and her longtime collaborator Sandra Gilbert upended traditional critical perspectives on female writers in publications such as The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (Yale University Press,1979), and Shakespeare’s Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets (Indiana University Press, 19791). They also edited the inaugural Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (W.W. Norton, 1985). Her latest solo work is Late-Life Love: A Memoir (W.W. Norton, 2018).

Michael A. McRobbie, president of Indiana University, stated that “Susan Gubar’s wide-ranging and acclaimed academic accomplishments fully warrant this prestigious honor. She has brought vibrant intellectual energy to her long and illustrious career as one of this nation’s leading literary scholars and feminist critics. Her work charts new intellectual territory and challenges the assumptions that structure literary scholarship. She has had a remarkable impact on generations of feminist scholars, and she taught thousands of students during her 36-year career at Indiana University – many of whom have gone on to hold faculty positions in English and comparative literature departments around the world.”

Dr. Gubar is a graduate of City College of New York. She earned a master’s degree at the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. at the University of Iowa.