Awards

Guggenheim Fellow - 1980

About Martha J. Vicinus

Martha Vicinus joined the Department of English faculty at IU Bloomington as an assistant professor in 1968. She was promoted to associate professor in 1972 and to professor in 1977. She also served as associate editor (1969-1970) and editor of Victorian Studies (1970-1981). During her time at IU, she was active in local unions, serving as president of the American Federation of Teachers (1975-1976), and women’s organizations, serving as a member of the Women’s Studies Coordinating Committee (1974), which recommended the founding of the Women’s Studies Program at IU. She left IU in 1981 to take a professorship at the University of Michigan. While at Michigan, she has chaired the Department of English (1994-1998), was the interim chair of graduate studies in the Department of English (2001-2002), was named the Eliza M. Mosher Distinguished University Professor of English, Women’s Studies, and History in 1994, and is currently an emeritus professor. Vicinus received a B.A. in English with honors from Northwestern University in 1961, an M.A. in English from Johns Hopkins University in 1962, and a Ph.D. in English and history from the University of Wisconsin in 1968.

Vicinus is an English literature and women’s studies scholar, who is involved in professional organizations such as the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, and the National Women’s Studies Association. She is the editor of Lesbian Subjects: A Feminist Studies Reader (IU Press, 1996), the author of “‘The Gift of Love’: Nineteenth-Century Religion and Lesbian Passion,” (forthcoming in a special issue of Nineteenth-Century Contexts), and is working on “‘The Queer Comradeship of Outlawed Thought’: Vernon Lee (1856-1935) and the Art of Nostalgia.”