March 26, 1998 Contact: Jamie Lawson Reeves (615) 322-2706 jamie.l.reeves@vanderbilt.edu

Marcus named Edwin Mims Professor of English

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Leah S. Marcus of the University of Texas at Austin has joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University as the second Edwin Mims Professor of English. She will begin teaching this fall.

Marcus was Jane and Roland Blumberg Centennial Professor in English at the University of Texas at Austin from 1995 to fall 1997. Previously she taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her areas of teaching include Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton and the Old Testament as literature.

"Leah Marcus, as a noted scholar and outstanding and devoted teacher of the English Renaissance, brings additional luster to the Mims Professorship," said Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science Dean Ettore F. Infante. "We are delighted at her joining our community."

The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Marcus has written several books including "Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents" (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1990,) and "Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton" (London and New York: Routledge, 1996.) Her professional activities include serving on committees of The Modern Language Association of America, The Milton Society of America and election as a trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America.

Marcus received her doctorate and master's degree with highest honors from Columbia University. She received her bachelor's degree in English with honors and distinction from Carleton College.

Laurence Lerner, Edwin Mims Professor of English, Emeritus, joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1985 and was appointed Edwin Mims Professor of English in 1990. He retired in 1995.

The Mims professorship was created to honor the memory of Edwin Mims, a Vanderbilt alumnus and head of the Department of English from 1912 until 1942.

"The Mims professorship perpetuates the high quality of undergraduate teaching which captivated Dr. Mims' students and motivated them to respect and remember our British literacy heritage; the endowed chair in his name not only reminds us of his pedagogical achievements but also of the centrality of undergraduate teaching in our total enterprise," said Paul Elledge, then chair of the Department of English, in announcing the first professorship.

In 1986, Lucuis E. Burch Jr., a 1934 alumnus, initiated the project to endow the scholarship. The $1 million campaign to endow an Edwin Mims Professorship was spearheaded by former students and friends of Mims.

-VU-

Vanderbilt University is a private research university of approximately 5,900 undergraduates and 4,300 graduate and professional students. Founded in 1873, the University comprises 10 schools, a public policy institute, a distinguished medical center and The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center. Vanderbilt offers undergraduate programs in the liberal arts and sciences, education and human development, engineering and music, and a full range of graduate and professional degrees.

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