In 2012, she also received an honorary degree from the University of St. In 2007, Showalter was chair of the judges for the prestigious British literary award, the Man Booker International Prize. Showalter's best known works are Towards a Feminist Poetics (1979), The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture (1830–1980) (1985), Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle (1990), Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (1997), and Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage (2001). She is also the past-president of the Modern Language Association (MLA).

Her academic honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship (1981–82). She is the Avalon Foundation Professor Emerita. Her most innovative work in this field is in madness and hysteria in literature, specifically in women's writing and in the portrayal of female characters. Showalter is a specialist in Victorian literature and the Fin-de-siècle (turn of the 19th century). She is a recipient of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.

Showalter has been a television critic for People magazine and a commentator on BBC radio and television. Showalter has written and edited numerous books and articles focused on a variety of subjects, from feminist literary criticism to fashion, sometimes sparking controversy, especially with her work on illnesses. She influenced feminist literary criticism in the United States academia, developing the concept and practice of gynocritics, a term describing the study of 'women as writers'. Bryn Mawr College Brandeis University University of California, DavisĮlaine Showalter (born January 21, 1941) is an American literary critic, feminist, and writer on cultural and social issues.

Elaine showalter the female malady