Marjorie Perloff

Marjorie Perloff is considered one of the the leading literature and poetry scholars in the United States. She was born as Gabriele Mintz in September 28, 1931 in Vienna, Austria.

Her family had to flee Austria in 1938 to escape the National Socialist regime and settled in the Bronx in New York City. Gabriele, who changed her name to Majorie as an adolescent, attended Oberlin and Barnard College, and Catholic University of America in Washington, DC - there, she earned her doctorate with a dissertation on W.B. Yeats in 1965.

During her long academic career, she held positions at the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Southern California, and Stanford University. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1997 and also served as the president of the Modern Language Association, the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature.

The focus of her extensive academic work, initially on W.B. Yeats, Robert Lowell, and Frank O’Hara evetually shifted towards contemporary literary avant-garde.

Perloff has not only published on American poets of the 20th and 21st century, but also on Austrian literature of the inter-war period. In addition, she has published an autobiagrophy about her escape from Vienna.

In 2016, Perloff was warded an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy by the University of Innsbruck, Austria to honor her outstanding academic contributions. She was the first guest professor of the “LFUI (Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck) – Wittgenstein Guest Professorship Program.” Over the duration of a month, the renowned American poetry scholar and critic lectured in Innsbruck concerning the influence of this well-known philosopher on modernist literature.