AROUND THE QUADS
5 Minutes with … Sharon Marcus
Sharon Marcus
PHOTO: ELLIS AVERY
Sharon Marcus, professor of English and comparative literature, specializes in 19th-century British and French novels, urban and architectural studies, and feminist and queer theory. Her latest book, published this year, is Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. CCT caught up with her during the summer to find out more.
Where did you grow up?
Forest Hills, Queens.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a librarian. I wanted a job where I would be paid to read. That was my goal from a very young age.
Was your family literary?
In a way. My mother was a nurse, my father was an English teacher in the public school system — he also, in his spare time, used to write fiction. I grew up with books everywhere. My father was even more of a bibliomaniac than I am. We didn’t live in very large apartments, and there were some apartments where we had books in the kitchen, books in the dining room, books in the living room, books in the bedroom — books everywhere except the bathroom. I was sort of the librarian of the house; I knew where each book was.
How did you become interested in Victorian literature?
I was always interested in Victorian literature, from a very young age — 9 or 10 — and I think it’s because I picked up books such as David Copperfield and Jane Eyre and they were about children. When I started reading Jane Eyre, it sounded like a child was narrating it, that you were right there and this 9-year-old was talking … I think it was so striking to see that kind of authority assigned to a child’s voice that I felt very, very connected to Victorian literature and it felt really thrilling.
How did you end up at Columbia?
I got my graduate degree at Johns Hopkins and was very lucky that my first job was at Berkeley. I got tenure and was happy there, but I never loved California — I always felt that I was more of an East Coast person.
After I’d been there about eight years, I met someone in New York, and two years after I met her I was invited to apply for a job at Columbia. It had seemed too good to be true. I can’t say that I ever had a fantasy of a job at Columbia, because I’m not the type to indulge in wishful fantasies — I always think the worst is going to happen. But getting a job here was one of the best things that ever happened.
How has your discipline changed during the last few decades?
When I started grad school, it was really innovative and daring to blend history and literature. Now I think what’s happening is that it’s become really daring to return to formal questions and ask, “What is it about literature that’s uniquely literary?” and to pay a little less attention to
how literature intervenes in the larger world and reflects the larger world.
I think that studies of the novel are always going to be caught in the back-and-forth between “[Does] literature stand alone?” or, “Is literature a response to the world?”
What is your favorite course to teach?
“Odd Women and Queer Men in Victorian Literature,” which I always teach as an undergraduate course. Undergraduates think the Victorians were very strait-laced, and they’re always surprised to see how much eccentricity and sheer diversity there is in Victorian fiction.
What are you working on?
I’m doing research for a book about 19th-century celebrity where I’m going to focus on Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt.
What have you been reading for fun?
Here are things I recently finished: Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood; an excellent book by Javier Marias, Voyage Along the Horizon: A Novel; and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Fifth Book of Peace.
Where do you live?
The East Village.
What is your favorite vacation spot?
My bathtub!
What is your favorite food?
Chocolate. Or coffee ice cream.
If you weren’t teaching, what would you be doing?
I would probably be a research scientist — I did almost go to medical school. But that’s a whole other story.
Interview:
Rose Kernochan ’82 Barnard
|
Contact CCT
Advertise with CCT
University 
College 
Alumni Home
