Susan Stanford Friedman was Virginia Woolf Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was the former chair of the Department of English, past director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities, one of the founding members of the UW-Madison Women's Studies Program in 1975, and the author of four books and over eighty articles and book chapters. Friedman was a trailblazing scholar of literary studies, gender studies, modernism, cultural theory, migration/diaspora studies, planetary literatures, and postcolonial studies.
Friedman's influence on the fields of literary studies and gender studies was significant, her contributions honored over the course of her career with named Professorships, the Perkins Prize for Best Book in Narrative Studies, the Wayne C. Booth Award for Lifetime Achievement in Narrative Studies, and numerous teaching awards. Known for recasting modernity as a networked, circulating, and recurrent phenomenon, she revised the scope of modernist critique and opened the practice to more integrated and interdisciplinary study. Friedman brought the Twentieth Century poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) back into critical conversation within the modernist literary landscape and in her groundbreaking work on feminist theory proposed a multiculturalist and geopolitical definition of feminism.
Over the course of her career she lectured around the world, and her work has been translated into Chinese, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Serbian, and Spanish. Friedman's more recent work turned towards Oceania and the islands and archipelagos of the Pacific, bringing into sharp focus the ecologically inflected planetarity and politics of women poets as she uncovered both the human and non-human dimensions of modernity across scales large and small, distant and proximate.
Her monograph
Friedman died of cancer on February 26, 2023, at her home in Madison-Wisconsin, at age 79.
This biography was taken from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's obituary in 2024: https://english.wisc.edu/staff/friedman-susan-stanford/
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includes correspondence from Adrienne Rich
This collection consists of the professional papers of Susan Stanford Friedman (1943-2023), Virginia Woolf Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Friedman was a scholar of literary studies, gender studies, modernism, cultural theory, migration/diaspora studies, planetary literatures, and postcolonial studies. The collection includes correspondence, research and lecture notes, syllabi, conference materials, and draft writings. Materials date from 1974 to 2022 and are arranged into 6 series.
Note that all folder titles in quotations were created by Friedman. All other folder titles were created by the processor.
Series 1, ADMINISTRATIVE MATERIALS, 1975 - 2020, includes correspondence, fellowship applications, and planning materials related to Friedman's work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Also included are reports from various committees related to the Women's Studies program, co-founded by Friedman in 1975. This series is arranged alphabetically by record type.
Series 2, CORRESPONDENCE, 1971 - 2020, includes correspondence from Rachel DuPlessis, Caren Kaplan, Elaine Marks, and Patricia Yaeger. Topics include talks and writings by Friedman and conferences. This series is arranged by correspondent's last name then by topic.
Series 3, CONFERENCE MATERIALS, 1979 - 2020, includes correspondence, typed and handwritten notes, and papers by Friedman. Conference topics include "Contemporary Issues in Feminist Theory and Methodology," "EDGES Conference on the Politics of Gendered Difference, Civil Rights, and the Workplace," "European Women's Studies from Multicultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives," "GlobalGRACE," and "When the Professional is Political: Feminism, Activism, and the Academy." This series is arranged alphabetically by conference title.
Series 4, TEACHING MATERIALS, 1974 - 2015, includes syllabi, typed and handwritten lecture notes, and annotated readings. Course titles include "Muslim Feminisms and Women's Diasporic Writing," "Feminist Literary Theory," "Global/Local, Nation, Postcolonialism, Transnationalism, Diaspora/Migration," "Virginia Woolf," and "Women's Studies 101." Note that not all materials included a course number or a course title. The same course numbers occasionally had different course titles over time so the processor only provided the information they could confirm. This series is arranged alphabetically by course number then course title.
Series 5, WRITINGS, 1974 - 2022, includes writings by Friedman and writings by others. This series is arranged into 2 sub-series.
Series 5, sub-series 1, WRITINGS BY FRIEDMAN, 1974 - 2022, includes typed and handwritten drafts of articles, books, chapters, and talks. This series also includes related correspondence and notes. Titles include ""Beyond Gynocriticism and Gynesis: The New Geography of Identity and Narrative Studies in the 1990s," ""Beyond Difference: Migratory Feminism in the Borderlands," ""World Literature and Anglophone Arab Writers in the Diaspora,"
Series 5, sub-series 2, WRITINGS BY OTHERS, 1995 - 2017, includes typed drafts, offprints, and correspondence from other scholars including Giovanna Covi, Cyrena Pondrom, and R. Radhakrishnan. This sub-series is arranged alphabetically by scholar's last name.
Series 6, RESEARCH, includes handwritten notes, photocopied archival materials, and annotated readings. This series is arranged into 2 sub-series.
Series 6, sub-series 1, RESEARCH BY SUBJECT, 1974 - 2020, includes typed and handwritten notes, photocopied archival materials, annotated readings, and clippings, related to Friedman's research. Topics include Bryher, feminism, Sigmund Freud, Hilda Doolittle, narrative, and psychoanalysis. This sub-series is arranged alphabetically by topic.
Series 6, sub-series 2, RESEARCH BY SCHOLAR'S LAST NAME, 1979 - 2021, includes annotated readings and handwritten notes regarding published works and research areas of specific scholars and authors. This sub-series is arranged alphabetically by scholar's last name.
All researchers seeking to publish materials from the collections of the John Hay Library are requested to complete a Notice of Intent to Publish, prior to reproducing, quoting, or otherwise publishing any portion or extract from this collection. Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. It is up to the researcher to determine the owners of the literary rights and to obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Susan Stanford Friedman papers, Ms.2024.023, Box [#], Folder [#], Pembroke Center Archives, John Hay Library, Brown University.
This collection is arranged into 6 series.
There are no restrictions on access for analog materials, except that the collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested. Advance notice is required to view born-digital records. Born-digital materials in this collection have not been reformatted yet. Researchers may request access to copies by contacting the John Hay Library with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed to hay@brown.edu.
Gift of Edward Friedman (Susan Stanford Friedman's husband) in 2024.