Sharon Marcus works at the intersections of literature and history, feminist and queer theory.  

Her first book, APARTMENT STORIES: CITY AND HOME IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PARIS AND LONDON (University of California Press, 1999), used literature and archives of urban history and everyday life to restore to view the forms that domestic life took in the age of cities.  

Her second book, BETWEEN WOMEN: FRIENDSHIP, DESIRE, AND MARRIAGE IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND (Princeton University Press, 2007), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for best book in LGBT Studies, was a contribution to the history of sexuality and the history of women that drew on lifewriting, novels, legal discourse, fashion magazines, early work in anthropology, and other sources.  While most historians of same-sex relations have emphasized the importance of secrecy, silence, and restoring a hidden past to view, Professor Marcus called attention to the many important ways that relationships between women appeared directly on the archives surface -- in the letters women wrote to each other, the memoirs they composed about one another, and the literary narratives they developed that made women's bonds of evident importance.

Professor Marcus has just begun research for a book on Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, and the nineteenth-century culture of theatrical celebrity.