Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Member, Committee on Global Thought

Sharon Marcus is the Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She received her B.A. from Brown University in 1986 and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1995. Her research focuses on the literature, culture, and history of nineteenth-century England and France, in particular on questions of gender and sexuality. She was a Governing Board Member of the Society of Heyman Fellows, Columbia University from 2018–2021. The author of two prize-winning books: Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London (University of California Press, 1999) and Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (Princeton University Press, 2007; Spanish translation, 2009), she is currently completing a study of theatrical celebrity in the nineteenth century.

Marcus sits on the advisory board of several journals including Nineteenth-Century Literature and Public Culture and in 2012 became co-founder and editor-in-chief of Public Books, an online review of arts and ideas. A member of the New York Institute for the Humanities, Marcus has received Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, and ACLS fellowships, as well as a Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award.

Curriculum Vitae

Website

Select Publications

  • The Drama of Celebrity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
  • Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
    • Albion Prize, North American Conference for British Studies, best book on Britain after 1800; Perkins Prize, International Society for the Study of Narrative, for book that makes the most significant contribution to the study of narrative; Lambda Literary Award, best book in lesbian and gay studies; Alan Bray Memorial Award, MLA, best book in lesbian and gay studies; Finalist, Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction, Publishing Triangle.
    • Featured in “Book Review Forum,” Victorian Studies 50.1 (Autumn 2007). Contributors: Richard Dellamora, Laura Mayhall, Martha Vicinus.
    • Translated into Spanish as Entre mujeres: Amistad, deseo y matrimonio en la Inglaterra Victoriana. Trans. M. Josep Cuenca. Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2009.
  • “Introduction: World Literature and Global Performance.” Co-authored with Katherine Biers. Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Film: 1-15.
  • “How to Talk About Books You Have Read.” PMLA 130.2 (2015), roundtable on “The Semi-Public Intellectual,” forthcoming.
  • “Celebrity Past and Present.” Introduction to Celebrities and Publics in the Internet Era, special issue of Public Culture 27.1 (January 2015).
  • “Celebrity 2.0: The Case of Marina Abramović.” Public Culture 27.1 (January 2015).

Education

  • Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University, Humanities Center, Comparative Literature
  • B.A., Brown University, Comparative Literature (Honors)