Jane Marcus

Jane Marcus, one of the most insightful critics of modernism, was a Distinguished Professor of English at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A pioneering feminist literary scholar, she specialized in women writers of the modernist era, changing the way we read the work of Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, and Nancy Cunard, among others, by focusing on the social and political context and implications of their writing. She published extensively in her field, including such...See more

Jane Marcus, one of the most insightful critics of modernism, was a Distinguished Professor of English at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A pioneering feminist literary scholar, she specialized in women writers of the modernist era, changing the way we read the work of Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, and Nancy Cunard, among others, by focusing on the social and political context and implications of their writing. She published extensively in her field, including such foundational titles as Virginia Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy (1987); Art and Anger: Reading Like a Woman (1988); and Hearts of Darkness: White Women Write Race (2004). As an educator, her seminars on literary modernism, "the other" World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and Virginia Woolf for the 21st Century, were highly regarded and generative, as she inspired succeeding generations of young scholars and activists to mine the archives in order to adjust and correct the public record. See less