Elaine Marks (1930–2001)

"As a post-Holocaust Jew, a woman and a lesbian, Elaine experienced the Existentialist doctrine of 'otherness' years before she ever studied it or taught it through French literature, specifically through her groundbreaking studies of
Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, French gay and lesbian literature, postwar feminism and Jewish French writers. Otherness in all its forms, but especially outlaw love and
transgressive desire, also drew her to other great French writers including Villon, Racine, Proust and Baudelaire."

"She held posts as instructor, lecturer and professor at New York University, the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, but she spent the bulk of her teaching career,
twenty-two years in all, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, from which she retired as Germaine
Brée Professor of French and Women's Studies in December, 2000."