Susan Gubar
Quick Facts
Biography
Susan D. Gubar (born November 30, 1944) is an American author and distinguished Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies at Indiana University. She is best known for co-authoring, with Sandra M. Gilbert, a standard feminist text, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979) and a trilogy on women's writing in the 20th century. Her honours include the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award.
Education
Gubar received an BA from the City College of New York, an MA from the University of Michigan, and a PhD from the University of Iowa.
Career
Gubar joined the faculty of Indiana University in 1973, at a time when there were three female professors among the 70 in its English department.
Gubar and Gilbert edited the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English, published in 1985 (ISBN 0393019403); its publication resulted in both of them being included among Ms.'s women of the year in 1986.
Her book Judas: A Biography, was published in 2009 by W.W. Norton (ISBN 9780393064834). Her other writings include essays on the relationship between Judaism and feminism, and the role of poetry in Holocaust remembrance.
In December 2009, Gubar retired from Indiana University at age 65, due to complications following a November 2008 diagnosis of advanced ovarian cancer.The "wrenching story" of her subsequent medical treatment (in which she underwent a "debulking" surgery which included the removal of her appendix, uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, and part of her intestines) led her to write Memoir of a Debulked Woman (2012, ISBN 978-0-393-07325-6).She continues her story as a blogger in "Living with Cancer" for The New York Times.
In 2012, she and her longtime collaborator Sandra M. Gilbert were awarded the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Book Critics Circle.