Elaine Marks, 1930 - 2001

Donated in 2004, the papers of Elaine Marks document the extraordinary career of a pioneer of women’s studies and an eminent scholar of French literature. After graduating magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1952, Marks received her Ph.D. from New York University in 1958 and held teaching positions at New York University, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.  In 1977, she became the first Chair of the Women’s Studies Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where she remained for twenty-two years, serving as the Chair of the Women’s Studies Program and as the Germaine Brée Professor of French and Women’s Studies.  In addition to her groundbreaking anthology New French Feminism (University of Massachussetts Press, 1980), co-edited with Isabelle de Courtivron, Marks authored several important books including Colette (Rutgers University Press, 1960), Encounters with Death: An Essay on the Sensibility of Simone de Beauvoir (Rutgers University Press, 1973), and Marrano as Metaphor: The Jewish Presence in French Writing (Columbia University Press, 1996) as well a range of anthologies, editions, and articles.  The numerous honors she received throughout her career, such as the Guggenheim Fellowship (1992), the University of Wisconsin–Madison Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (1993), the presidency of the Modern Language Association (1993), and the prestigious French title of Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques (1994), recognized her significant contributions as scholar, teacher, and esteemed member of the academic profession. 

The Marks Papers display the depth, breadth, and deeply personal enthusiasm of Marks’s intellectual commitments, from her earliest explorations of literary criticism at Bryn Mawr to her mature research and reflections on teaching and the academy.  Through drafts of published writing, professional and personal correspondence, teaching materials, and a wealth of photographs, the Papers document not only Marks’s own career but the dramatic emergence and development of the field of Women’s Studies that she was instrumental in advancing over a period of four decades.

Elaine Marks Papers finding aid