Linda Wagner-Martin, the Frank Borden Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature Emeritus in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences, received a lifetime achievement award in American literary studies.
The Jay B. Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary Studies was presented on Jan. 6 at the Modern Language Association meeting in Seattle.
The Hubbell award is given each year “to a scholar who has made an extraordinary contribution to the study of American literature over the course of his or her career.” Wagner-Martin is cited as being “a pioneer, a standard-setter and an exemplar for more than a half century.”
William Andrews, senior associate dean for the fine arts and humanities, presented the award to Wagner-Martin.
“As an editor, she has also been extraordinarily productive, having published 26 edited essay collections, bibliographies and reviews of scholarship,” he said. “When I reflect on the fact that Linda has published an average of one book per year for the last half century, I don’t know what to admire more — the creativity or the stamina.”
Wagner-Martin has been honored with other awards and recognitions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a senior fellow at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
She has edited or written 50 books, including biographies on Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Stein, Ellen Glasgow, Barbara Kingsolver and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald. She has also co-edited the Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States and its accompanying anthology with Cathy N. Davidson.
In April 2011, more than 100 of Wagner-Martin’s former graduate students returned to Chapel Hill to host an academic conference in her honor.
