Marks, Elaine

Elaine Marks, an eminent scholar of women's studies, French literature, and Jewish studies, was born in New York City in 1930. Marks attended the Walden School from 1940 to 1948. She graduated magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 1952 and pursued graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, where she received a doctorate in 1958. Marks held teaching appointments at New York University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for twenty-two years, where she was the Germaine Brée Professor of French and Women's Studies.

Books by Elaine Marks include Colette (Rutgers University Press, 1960), Simone de Beauvoir: Encounters with Death (Rutgers University Press, 1973), Homosexualities and French Literature: Cultural Contexts, Critical Texts, co-edited with George Stambolian (Cornell University Press, 1979), New French Feminism (University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), co-edited with Isabelle de Courtivron, and Marrano as Metaphor: The Jewish Presence in French Writing (Columbia University Press, 1996). Elaine Marks retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000. She died in Dallas in October 2001.

From the guide to the Elaine Marks papers, Marks (Elaine) papers, (bulk 1949-2001), 1893-2001, (John Hay Library Special Collections)