The professor and feminist critic uses literature to understand life—and death
In the fall of 2008, Susan Gubar was enjoying the success that comes
from a long and illustrious academic career. She was serving as a
special adviser to the provost at Indiana University, supervising a
dozen dissertation students, and teaching a graduate course on feminist
literary criticism that evolved from the groundbreaking book she had
written with a colleague 30 years earlier, The Madwoman in the Attic.
But on November 5, Ms. Gubar went to the hospital experiencing
abdominal discomfort and received some shocking news. She had advanced
ovarian cancer.
Three days later she underwent a radical surgery called "debulking,"
in which doctors removed her uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, appendix,
and seven inches of her intestines. She has never fully recovered.
No comments:
Post a Comment