Oral history interview with Sharon Marcus, 2015

Biographical Note

Sharon Marcus is a professor of 19th-century British and French literature in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she has taught since 2003. She was the Director of Graduate Studies for IRWAG from 2005-2008 and served on the Institute's Executive Committee from 2004-2009. In 2014 she became Dean of the Humanities. Prior to coming to Columbia, she was a professor in the Berkeley English department from 1994-2003, where she served on the Women, Gender and Sexuality program and acted as the Director of the LGBT Studies minor program. She did her graduate work at Johns Hopkins University and her undergraduate work at Brown. Her research has focused on urbanism and architectural history, gender and sexuality, reading practices, and theatrical celebrity

Scope and Contents

In this interview, Sharon Marcus discusses the relationship between IRWGS and Columbia University. She characterizes this relationship as mutually supportive by comparing the IRWGS curriculum to the Columbia Core curriculum. She also addresses how IRWGS provides a space for students and faculty to collaborate across departments and how the institute cooperates with other centers on campus to address issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and class. Marcus compares the state of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Columbia to that of other institutions like Brown University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Marcus goes on to discuss the difference between institutes and departments and how it affects the operations of IRWGS. Additionally, by addressing problems of sexual assault on Columbia's campus, Marcus explains the nature of institutional change and examines the relationship between IRWGS and activism

Subjects

• College teachers--Interviews.
• College teachers--Political activity.
• Columbia University. Institute for Research on Women and Gender.
• Crow, Andrea, interviewer.
• Feminism and higher education--United States.
• Gay and lesbian studies--United States.
• Interdisciplinary approach in education.
• Interviews.
• Marcus, Sharon, 1966---Interviews.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Rape in universities and colleges--United States.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 2015