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Susan Gubar papers, 1975-2011

A Guide to the Records at the Indiana University Archives

Finding aid prepared by Eliza Sparacino.

Summary Information

Repository
Indiana University Archives
1320 East Tenth Street
Herman B Wells Library E460
Bloomington, IN 47405-7000
Phone: 812-855-1127
Email: archives@indiana.edu
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/archives

Creator
Gubar, Susan, 1944-

Title
Susan Gubar papers, 1975-2011

Collection No.
C418

Extent
6 cubic feet (6 boxes)

Language
The primary language of the collection is English, though there are a small number of publications in other languages including Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Abstract
The groundbreaking feminist scholar and literary critic, Susan Gubar, began teaching at Indiana University in 1973 and retired as Distinguished Professor Emerita of English in 2010. This collection contains teaching and research material; material related to professional activities such as conferences, workshops, and committees; an extensive collection of news clippings with reviews and interviews; Gubar’s publications and information related to the development of those publications, and both personal and professional correspondence.

Access Restrictions

Three unpublished manuscripts are closed for research at this time. These are indicated in the folder list.

Advance notice required for access to collection.

Biographical Note

Susan Gubar, the esteemed feminist scholar and critic, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944. She began teaching at Indiana University in 1973 after receiving her B.A. from the City University of New York in 1965 and her M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1968. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1972. Gubar also taught at the University of Illinois and at Tufts University. She retired from IU as Distinguished Professor Emerita of English in 2010.

Topics encompassed by Gubar’s research and criticism are feminist theory and gender studies, issues related to the Holocaust, critical race studies, and the examination of the role of Judas in the history of Western civilization. During the rise of the women’s movement in the 1970s, Gubar sought to develop feminist criticism into a systematic study. Gubar examined literary history, the way in which gender affects literary creativity and considered women’s literature in the context of women’s culture and place in society. In her publications Gubar endeavored to appeal to a larger general audience outside of academia and involve diverse voices in the critical conversation.

At IU, Gubar taught 19th and 20th century English fiction, freshman introductory courses in literature and composition and graduate courses in feminist studies and Jewish literature. One class in literary interpretation was taught at the Indiana Women’s Prison in 1977. In 2006, Gubar became a Special Advisor to the Provost for the Arts and the Humanities at IU.

Gubar published a number of books and articles with her long-time collaborator, the feminist critic and poet, Sandra M. Gilbert, whom she met at IU in 1973. Gilbert retired as Distinguished Professor of English Emerita at the University of California, Davis in 2006. Their joint effort produced many pivotal works, including The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the 19th-Century Literary Imagination (1979), No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century: The War of the Words (1988), Sexchanges (1989), and Letters from the Front (1994). Gubar and Gilbert also collaborated on the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English (third edition, 2007) and received a Ms. Woman of the Year award for the publication in 1985.

In addition to a large number of articles, Gubar also authored Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture (1997), Critical Condition: Feminism at the Turn of the Century (2000), Poetry After Auschwitz: Remembering What One Never Knew (2003), Rooms of Our Own (2006), and Judas: A Biography (2009). Gubar worked extensively as an editor; among her edited works is the first annotated edition of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own (2005).

Gubar won numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Award for The Madwoman in the Attic . At IU, Gubar was awarded an AMOCO Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1986 and a President's Medal for Excellence in 2010. In 2011 she became a faculty fellow of the American Philosophical Society.

Gubar’s husband, Donald J. Gray, retired as Professor Emeritus and Culbertson Chair Emeritus of English at IU in 1998. Susan was previously married to Edward Gubar, Director, Publications and Undergraduate Grant Program, Hutton Honors College at IU. Prior to his work with the Hutton Honors College, Edward Gubar was a faculty member in the School of Journalism for more than twenty years. Susan and Edward had two daughters, Molly (Marah) and Simone.

Arrangement

The collection is organized into three series: Biographical, Publications, and Teaching and professional activities.

Scope and Content Note

With materials which range from 1975 through 2010, the Susan Gubar papers are organized into three series: Biographical, Publications, and Teaching and professional activities.

The first series, Biographical (1975-2011), is further organized into two subseries. The first subseries, Awards and honors (1975-2011), includes certificates, plaques, and accolades Gubar received from IU, Princeton University, and the University of Iowa while other files document her retirement from IU in 2010. The second subseries, General (1981-2009), contains several books which cite Gubar’s publications, one of which was written by a former student of Gubar and is in Japanese. The subseries also includes reviews and analysis of her work as well as a family memoir written by Gubar’s mother Luise David. This subseries contains the Ms. magazine from 1986 naming Gubar and Sandra M. Gilbert Woman of the Year.

The second series, Publications (1976-2010), includes Gubar’s published works and is divided into three subseries. Arranged alphabetically, the first subseries, Monographs (1979-2009), includes books authored, co-authored, or edited by Gubar and books written or edited by others to which she contributed an essay or other critical section. Some of these materials contain hand-written notes by Gubar. Foreign language versions of Gubar’s books are inter-filed with the English language publications. The second subseries, Journal articles (1976-2010), is arranged chronologically and contains a large number of journals that include her essays, as well as offprints and photocopies of articles written by Gubar. The third and last subseries, Unpublished manuscripts (circa 2000, 2010), contains three unpublished manuscripts.

The third series, Teaching and professional activities (1975-2010), is comprised of two subseries. The first subseries, Teaching notes and materials (1975-2008), contains syllabi, study guides, bibliographies, readings, correspondence and planning materials related to undergraduate and graduate courses Gubar taught and lecture series she helped organize at IU. The second subseries, Subject and name files (1975-2010), contains a diverse variety of documents kept in the original order maintained by Gubar. Materials related to her professional activities aside from teaching are found in this series, such as contracts, letters of agreement, grant applications, and committee and conference planning documents. Clippings and reviews of Gubar’s publications and responses to her writing are incorporated with correspondence with other writers, colleagues, and friends. There is also a large amount of correspondence with editors, publishers, and other parties concerning the development and publication of her work. A large body of images considered for reproduction in Gubar’s books was transferred to the Archives photographs collection. Consult the Archives Curator of Photographs for further information.

Separated Material

One box of photographic materials, including one personal color photograph, black and white prints, slides, and digital files of images considered and used for reproduction in Gubar’s publications have been transferred to the Photography Archives.

Administrative Information

Acquisition Information
Accession numbers 2010/070, 2011/094.
Usage Restrictions
The donor(s) of this collection have transferred their copyrights for the materials to the Trustees of Indiana University through a Deed of Gift. For more information, please contact the Indiana University Archives staff.

The Indiana University Archives respects the intellectual property rights of others and does not claim any copyrights for non-university records, materials in the public domain, or materials for which we do not hold a Deed of Gift. Responsibility for the determination of the copyright status of these materials rests with those persons wishing to reuse the materials. Researchers are responsible for securing permission from copyright owners and any other rights holders for any reuse of these materials that extends beyond fair use or other statutory limitations.

Digital reproductions of archival materials from the Indiana University Archives are made available for noncommercial educational and research purposes only. If you are the copyright holder for any of the digitized materials and have questions about its inclusion on our site, please contact the Indiana University Archivist.

Preferred Citation
[Item], Susan Gubar papers, Collection C418, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington.
Provenance
Papers deposited with the IU Archives by Susan Gubar in 2010.
Processing Information
Processed by Eliza Sparacino.

Completed in 2011.

Container List


Series: Box 1 Biographical, 1975-2011 

Subseries: Box 1 Awards and honors, 1975-2010 

American Philosophical Society, 2011 

Indiana University,

Senior Class Council, Recognition of Outstanding Teaching Excellence, 1975-76 

Fellow of the Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study, 1983 

Amoco Foundation Award in Recognition of Distinguished Teaching, 1986 

I.U. Board of Trustees, Distinguished Professor of English, 1990 

Indiana University Founder’s Day, 1990 

Office for Women’s Affairs, Distinguished Scholar Award, 1991 

College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Association, Distinguished Faculty Award, 1992 

Professors of Distinguished Rank, 1993 

Distinguished Lecturer, School of Arts and Sciences, IUPU Fort Wayne, 2000 

I.U. Graduate & Professional Student Organization, Faculty Mentor Award, 2003 

Appreciation on Occasion of Formal Retirement, 2010 

Gubar Retirement, 2010 

2 DVDs


In Honor of Retiring Faculty, 2010 

President’s Medal, 2010 

(Oversized Certificate Located in Memorabilia Cabinet)


Retirement Reunion, 2010 

Iowa, University of, College of Arts and Liberal Sciences, Alumni Fellow, 2008 

Princeton University, Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow, The University Center for Human Values, 2001-02 

Subseries: Box 1 General, 1981-2009 

Curriculm Vitae, 2005 

Faculty Summary Reports, 1974-2005 

"Introduction," Yale French Studies 62 (1981) 

"A Country of their Own," Research and Creative Activity 7, no. 1 (September 1983) 

"Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Editors, 'The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women,'" Ms. 14, no. 7 (January 1986) 

“Susan Gubar’s view of No Man’s Land,” Indiana Alumni Magazine 49, no. 4 (January/February 1987) 

“An interview with Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar,” Critical Texts: A Review of Theory and Criticism 6, no. 1 (1989) 

Indiana Alumni Magazine 52, no. 2 (November/December 1989) 

Research and Creative Activity 13, no. 2 (February 1990) 

“Other Ways of Knowing,” Research and Creative Activity 15, no. 1 (October 1991) 

“Professor Puts Heart in Work,” Indiana Daily Student, November 9, 1992 

“Woman of the Year (for Many Years): A Talk with Susan Gubar,” The College 16, no. 2 (Spring 1993) 

Contemporary World Literature 41 (1994) 

[Korean]


Making Feminist History: The Literary Scholarship of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, 1994 

Contemporary World Literature 44 (1995) 

[Korean]


How We Survived – Chronicles of Our Family, by Luise David, 2003 

Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey, Norton Critical Edition, 2004 

“The Graying of the Faculty,” The College 29, no. 1 (Summer 2005) 

“A Life Inside the Book,” Indiana University Research and Creative Activity 29, no. 1 (Fall 2006) 

Sugiyama, Naoko, Motherhood in America, Minority Women Literature: Kingston, Morrison, Silko, 2007 

[Japanese]


Presentación del libro, Lo largo y lo corto del verso Holocausto by Susan Gubar, Museo del Holocausto, Buenos Aires, 2007 ,

DVD


Federico, Annette R., ed., Gilbert & Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic: After 30 Years, 2009 

Series: Box 2 Publications, 1976-2011 

Subseries: Box 2 Monographs, 1979-2011 

Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars , 1987 

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature , 2003 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist Reformer , 1999 

Close Reading: The Reader, 2003 

Critical Condition: Feminism at the turn of the Century , 2000 

Dekonstruktiver Feminismus Literaturwissenschaft in Amerika , 1992 

English Inside and Out: The Places of Literary Criticism , 1993 

Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community , 2002 

Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visual , 2007 

The Female Autograph,1987 

The Female Imagination and The Modernist Aesthetic , 1986 

Feminism: Beside Itself, 1995 

Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader , 2007 

For Adult Users Only: The Dilemma of Violent Pornography , 1989 

The Future of Literary Theory, 1989 

Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism , 1986 

Género, Identidade e Desejo: Antologia Crítica do Feminismo Contemporâneo , 2002 

A History of Feminist Literary Criticism , 2007 

Judas: A Biography, 2009 

Leslie Fiedler and American Culture , 1999 

Letteratura E Femminismi ,2000 

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination ,

First edition, 1979 

Second edition, 2000 

Box 3 La loca del desván: La escritoria y la imaginación literaria de siglo XIX , 1998 

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination , 2009 

Korean edition


Mansfield Park and Persuasion: Contemporary Critical Essays , 1997 

Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory , 2001 

Masterpiece Theater: An Academic Melodrama , 1995 

Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer , Draft, August 2011 

MotherSongs, 1995 

No Man’s Land: the Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century ,

Vol. 1: The War of the Words , 1988 

Vol. 2: Sexchanges, 1989 

Vol.3: Letters from the Front , 1994 

The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English , 1996-2008 , undated 

Third Edition, Vols. 1 and 2, 2007 

Teaching Guides, 1996 , 2008 

A Classroom Guide to accompany The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English

Teaching with the Norton Anthology, Literature by Women: The Tradition in English ,

2nd edition, 1996 

3rd edition, 2008 

Poetry after Auschwitz: Remembering What One Never Knew , 2003 

Lo largo y lo corto del verso Holocausto , 2007 

Box 4 Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture , 1997 

Re-Reading Sappho: Reception and Transmission , 1996 

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, annotated and with introduction by Susan Gubar, 2005 

Rooms of Our Own, 2006 

Shakespeare’s Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets , 1979 

Signets: Reading H.D., 1990 

Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust , 2004 

True Confessions: Feminist Professors Tell Stories Out of School , 2011 

Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference , 1994 

Women and Men: The Consequences of Power , 1976 

Writing and Sexual Difference, 1982 

Subseries: Box 4 Articles, 1976-2010 

“The Genesis of Hunger, According to Shirley,” Feminist Studies 3, no. 3/4 (Spring- Summer 1976) 

“The Female Monster in Augustan Satire,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3, no. 2 (Winter 1977) 

“Women Writers: Anxieties of Authorship,” Review, Indiana University Alumni Association of the College of Arts and Sciences/Graduate School 20, no. 3 (Spring 1978) 

“Mother, maiden and the marriage of death: Women writers and an ancient myth,” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6 (1979) 

“C. L. Moore and the Conventions of Women’s SF,” Science-Fiction Studies 7, no. 1 (March 1980)  [offprint]

Introduction, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 7, no. 1/2 (1980) 

“On Ruth Stone,” The Iowa Review 12, no. 2/3 (Spring/Summer 1981) 

“Blessings in Disguise: Cross Dressing as Re-Dressing for Female Modernists,” The Massachusetts Review 22, no. 3 (Autumn 1981) 

“’The Blank Page’ and the Issues of Female Creativity,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 2 (Winter 1981) 

“A Jury of our Peers, Teaching and Learning in the Indiana Women’s Prison,” College English 43, no. 8 (December 1981) 

“Eve’s Lexi-Cons,” The Yale Review 71, no. 3 (Spring 1982) 

"Sexual Linguistics: Gender, Language, and Sexuality," New Literary History 16, no. 3 (Spring 1985) 

“Feminism and Utopia,” Science-Fiction Studies 13, no. 1 (March 1986)  [offprint]

Review in The Washington Times Magazine , April 20, 1987 

“Representing Pornography: Feminism, Criticism, and Depictions of Female Violation,” Critical Inquiry 13, no. 4 (Summer 1987) 

Reviews in The Women’s Review of Books 4, no. 10-11 (July-August, 1987) 

“Creating a Monster,” New York Times Book Review , September 6, 1987 

“Sex Wars: Not the Fun Kind,” New York Times Book Review , December 27, 1987 

Review of Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914, Victorian Studies 32, no. 1 (Autumn 1988)  [offprint]

“The Man on the Dump versus the United Dames of America; or, What Does Frank Lentricchia Want?” Critical Inquiry 14 (Winter 1988)  [offprint]

“A New Anthology of Literature by Women: Does it Define a Canon or Merely ‘Baptize a Kangaroo?’,” The Chronicle of Higher Education , November 22, 1989 

“The Engendering of Periodization,” The Kenyon Review 13, no. 3 (Summer 1991) 

“Masterpiece Theater: An Academic Melodrama,” Critical Inquiry 17, no. 4 (Summer 1991) 

Review of Epistemology of the Closet, Victorian Studies 35, no. 1 (Autumn 1991) 

Review of The Gender of Modernism: a Critical Anthology, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 11, no. 1 (Spring 1992) 

“Susan Clements: Introduction,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 13, no. 1 (Spring 1994) 

Box 5 “Eating the Bread of Affliction: Judaism and Feminist Criticism,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 13, no. 2 (Autumn 1994)  [offprint]

“Feminist Misogyny: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Paradox of ‘It Takes One to Know One,’” Feminist Studies 20, no. 3 (Fall 1994) 

“What Ails Feminist Criticism?” Critical Inquiry 24 (Summer 1998)  [offprint]

“Notations in Medias Res,” Critical Inquiry 25, no. 2 (Winter 1999) 

Review of Dirt and Desire: Reconstructing Southern Women’s Writing, Mississippi Quarterly 54, no. 1 (Winter 2000-2001) 

“Empathic Identification in Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces. Masculinity and Poetry after Auschwitz,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 1 (Autumn 2002) 

“Minstrelsy’s Racechanging Numbers: a Postscript to Racechange and the Fictions of Identity,” Modern Fiction Studies 49, no. 3 (Fall 2003) 

“Forum: Responses to Carolyn G. Heilbrun’s Guest Column,” PMLA 119, no. 2 (March 2004) 

“Introduction: The Differences Barbara Johnson Makes,” Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 34, no. 1 (Spring 2004)  [offprint]

“The Long and Short of Holocaust Verse,” New Literary History 35, no. 3 (Summer 2004)  [offprint]

"Falling for Etty Hillesum," Common Knowledge 12, no. 2 (Spring 2006) 

"The Importance of Canonization: A Response to Jay Ladin," Michigan Quarterly Review 45, no. 2 (Spring 2006) 

“Feminism Inside Out,” PMLA 121, no. 5 (October 2006)  [offprint]

“Racial Camp in The Producers and Bamboozled ," Film Quarterly 60, no. 2 (Winter 2006/2007) 

Review of Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism and the Problem of English, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 25, no. 4 (Summer 2007) 

“My Franziska, Charlotte Salomon, and the Decision to Not Be: Suicide Before, During, and After the Holocaust,” The Georgia Review 62 no. 4 (Winter 2008) 

“An Incredible Shrunken History: A Response to Sean Shesgreen,” Critical Inquiry 35, no.4 (Summer 2009) 

“The Graduate Student I Was, the Graduate Courses I Teach, and What Theory’s Got to Do With It,” Differences: The 20th Anniversary of A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 21, no. 1 (Spring 2010) 

"In the Chemo Colony," Critical Inquiry 37, no. 4 (Summer 2011) 

Subseries: Box 5 Unpublished manuscripts, ca. 2000 , 2010 

Jeannie, The King, and Me I, ca. 2000 

Restricted


Enduring Ovarian Cancer: My Year of Treatment , 2010 

Restricted


Feminist Facebook, 2010 

CD-ROM


Separation Anxiety, undated 

Restricted


Series: Box 5 Teaching and professional activities, 1975-2010 , undated 

Subseries: Teaching notes and materials, 1975-2008 , undated 

ENG L141: Intro Writing and Study of Literature I, undated 

ENG L142: Introduction to Writing II: Writing Disaster, 2007 

ENG L202 Literary Interpretation, Indiana Women’s Prison, 1977 

ENG L411, 1980 

ENG L605: Critical & Interpretive Theory, undated 

ENG L663: Introduction to Feminist Critical Studies, undated 

Feminist Criticism, 1975-1977 

Sample Syllabi, 2003-2008 

Women in Arts Lecture Series, 1978-1979 

Subseries: Subject and name files, 1975-2010, undated 

Arts and Humanities Infrastructure Committee, 2006-2008 

A Celebration of the Arts, 1991 

Colescott, Robert, 1987 , 1997 

Photographic materials removed


Critical Condition Reviews, 2000 

Darriau, Jean-Paul, 1996 

Feminist Thinking after Gender Trouble, Poster, 2008 

Gilbert, Sandra M., 1995 

Gray, Don, 70th Birthday Party, Invite, 1997 

Gros Louis, Dee, Memorial, 1993 

History of Women’s Fashion, undated 

Photographic materials removed


Important Papers,

1975-1980 

1982-1988 

1993-1999 

2000-2010 

Indiana Humanities Achievement Awards, Keynote Address, 1990 

Job Offers and Fellowship Letters, 1980-1991 

Jong, Erica, 1979 , 1985 

Judas Over the Centuries: An Erratic Apostle, Poster, 2008 

Box 6 Judas Poetry Permissions, 2007 

Judas Reviews, 2009 

Lessen-Reiche, Laurie Suzanne, undated 

Lecture, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2004-2005 

Madwoman Reviews, 1977-1999 

MLA Masters, 1995 

MLA/Woman Poets, 1977-1978 

Musée d’Unterlinden, 2008 

Photographic materials removed


NEH Seminar, 1981 

Projects in the Works, 2010 

Racechange Book Correspondence, 1993-1996 

Responses to Poetry After Auschwitz, 2002-2006 

Reviews and Correspondence,

1979-1981 

1985-1999 

1985-2001 

1985-2006 

1994-1996 

1996-1998 

1997-2000 

Rooms of Our Own, 2006-2008 

Rutgers Cover Photo, 1995 

Photographic materials removed


Udé, Iké, 1996 

Valuable Letters, 1978-2008 

Wasserman, Rosanne, 1989 

White Skin: Black Face, 1995 

WWII Permissions, Bills, 1986 

Photographic materials removed


Yale, No Man’s Land, 1988 

Photographic materials removed


Restricted Records

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