Gilliam, Harriet Sue, 1944-1993

Harriet Sue Gilliam was born on June 26, 1944, in Nashville, Tennessee. She attended David Lipscomb High School there from 1958 to 1962 then matriculated into Nashville's Vanderbilt University. Gilliam graduated from Vanderbilt magna cum laude in 1966, with a B.A. degree and honors in history. She received the Balfour Scholarship each of her four years at Vanderbilt and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1963 Gilliam received the Henrietta Hickman Morgan Prize, first place for a work of fiction.

After taking her bachelor's degree, Gilliam went directly to Yale University to complete her Master of Philosophy (1969) and her Ph.D.(1971), both in English. She was the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, the National Defense Education Act Fellowship (Title IV), the Kent Fellowship, and was a College Associate of Branford College. Gilliam served as a research assistant under Charles Feidelson, Jr. and was a teaching assistant in Yale's English and American Studies departments.

In 1971 Northwestern University hired Gilliam as an Assistant Professor of English. Her main area of expertise and teaching was modern fiction. In 1977, after her most productive period of publication, Gilliam received tenure as an Associate Professor of English. While at Northwestern she received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship as well as the American Council of Learned Societies Grant-in-Aid and Northwestern's Faculty Summer Research Grant. Gilliam presented several seminars and comments at meetings of the Modern Language Association and American Historical Association.

On May 9, 1993, Gilliam committed suicide while on medical leave from Northwestern. The University held a memorial service in her honor on May 20 at the Alice S. Millar Chapel in Evanston.

From the guide to the Harriet Gilliam (1944-1993) Papers, 1962-1993, (Northwestern University Archives)