Marjorie Garber is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.
She is the author of eighteen single-authored books and the editor or co-editor of seven edited collections. Among her books are six on Shakespeare (Dream in Shakespeare, Coming of Age in Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Ghost Writers, Shakespeare After All, Profiling Shakespeare, and Shakespeare and Modern Culture), two on gender and sexuality (Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety and Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life), two on cultural studies (Dog Love and Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses) four that directly address literary study and the arts (Academic Instincts; Patronizing the Arts; A Manifesto for Literary Studies; The Use and Abuse of Literature), and four collections of essays on literature and culture (Symptoms of Culture; Quotation Marks; Loaded Words; and The Muses on Their Lunch Hour). She has published essays in Critical Inquiry, Raritan, and the Shakespeare Quarterly, as well as articles and Op-Ed pieces in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harpers, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She is a member of the advisory board of the public television series Shakespeare Uncovered, and has appeared in several of its programs, as well as in many other television and radio interviews.
In addition to her writing and teaching, Marjorie Garber has held a number of administrative posts both within Harvard and in national and international organizations. At Harvard she has been the Director of the Humanities Center, the Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the Chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Director of Graduate Studies in the English department. She has served as the President of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, Trustee of the English Institute, and as a member of the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, has received honorary degrees from Bates College and Swarthmore College, and was honored as a Literary Light by the Boston Public Library. Her book Shakespeare After All was awarded the Christian Gauss Prize by Phi Beta Kappa. She is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, and was the First Inaugural Dean’s Visiting Professor at King’s College, London. She was chosen by Harvard as a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow, an award given to tenured faculty for distinction in research, teaching, and mentoring, and has also received teaching awards from the Harvard Extension School and from Yale College. In 2017-1018 she was selected by the Harvard Crimson as one of the Fifteen Professors of the Year.
The College of Arts