Name Martha Vicinus | ||
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Education University of Wisconsin-Madison (1968) Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada Nominations Stonewall Book Awards - Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Books Intimate Friends: Women, Suffer and Be Still, Independent Women: Work and, The industrial muse, Ambiguities of Self‑help Similar People George Chauncey, Martin Duberman, Florence Nightingale | ||
Martha Vicinus (born November 20, 1939) is an American scholar of English literature and Women's Studies. She serves as the Eliza M. Mosher Distinguished University Professor of English, Women's Studies, and History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has written several books about Victorian women as well as gender and sexuality. She earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1968.
She has been noted for drawing attention to the Victorian double standards that were applied to women and to the Victorian ideal of women without sexual desires. She has argued that society often defines sexuality through a male heterosexual perspective.
In addition to her career as a scholar, she has been active as an advocate of anti-war and LGBT causes.