In Memoriam: Sandra Gilbert, 1936-2024

Sandra M. Gilbert, longtime professor of English at the University of California, Davis, passed away on November 10. She was 87 years old.

Dr. Gilbert’s career in education began in 1968, when she took on a teaching position with what is now California State University, East Bay She transitioned to Indiana University Bloomington in 1972, where she taught for the next two years. In 1976, she began her three-decades-long tenure with the department of English at the University of California, Davis. During this time, she held an appointment as the C. Barnwell Straut Professor of English at Princeton University from 1985 to 1989. She retired from UC Davis in 2005 as a distinguished professor emerita and became the inaugural M. H. Abrams Distinguished Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

As a scholar, Dr. Gilbert’s research was dedicated to feminist literature, including both historic and contemporary works. She was the author of eight poetry books, several memoirs, and numerous critiques of feminist writing. Some of her most prominent academic publications include The Madwoman in the Attic (Yale University Press, 1979), The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (W.W. Norton & Company, 1985), and No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 1987).

Dr. Gilbert completed her undergraduate degree at Cornell University. She earned her master’s degree in English literature from New York University and her Ph.D. in English literature from Columbia University.