Mary Beth Rose

Mary Beth Rose 1948-2024

Mary Beth Rose died peacefully on December 17, 2024, at Three Crowns Park in Evanston, Illinois, where she had resided since October of this year. She was 76 years old. Previously, she was a resident of Chicago. She is survived by her former husband Lawrence Rosen, as well as her nephew Nicholas Flores, his wife Leynee, and her grand-nephew Lennox. She is predeceased by her sister Patricia. Although born in Chicago, Rose moved with her family to Beverly Hills, California, where she lived most of her early years and attended Beverly Hills High School. She graduated from Berkeley in 1971, and worked as a journalist before continuing her education in English literature at the University of Chicago for her MA degree (1974) and at Duke University for her PhD (1979).

Rose began her distinguished career as a journalist and later as a professor of English literature. She was author and editor of numerous books and articles on Renaissance literature. As one of Chicago's foremost leaders in public humanities, she took on key leadership roles at both the Newberry Library and the University of Illinois Chicago.

In the fall of 1985, she began working as Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Through her leadership, the Center was supported by prestigious grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1997, she accepted the position of Director of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she also taught as a Professor in the Department of English. She held the position of Director until 2010, and retired from UIC in 2018. Under her direction, the Institute at UIC came to national attention as it welcomed legions of celebrated scholars and mounted innovative conferences on topics ranging from the American Presidency to the politics of the modern family.

Rose wrote and lectured widely on literature of the English Renaissance. She was author of three groundbreaking scholarly monographs: The Expense of Spirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama (Cornell University Press, 1988; paper 1991); Gender and Heroism in Early Modern English Literature (University of Chicago Press, 2002); and most recently Plotting Motherhood in Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). She was also co-editor of Elizabeth I: Collected Works (University of Chicago Press, 2000), a landmark publication of the writings of Queen Elizabeth I. From 1995 to 1998 she served as editor of Renaissance Drama, one of the premier journals in Renaissance Studies. In 1997 and1998, she served as President of the Shakespeare Association of America, a prominent scholarly organization in Renaissance Studies in the United States. In all her scholarly work, Professor Rose explored the intersections of literary production with cultural norms and social standards; she focused in particular on how literary works enact or contest traditional gender roles. She continued to write after retirement and before her death was completing a book on tragedy and heroic masculinity in Shakespeare.

Rose received many awards and fellowships recognizing her distinguished research, including support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry Library, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Monticello Foundation. Her coedited volume of Elizabeth I's works won a prize from the Association of American Publishers.

In addition to her teaching at UIC, Rose held Lecturer and Visiting Professor positions at Northwestern University (1987-97) and the University of Chicago (2005). She will be fondly remembered by generations of students and colleagues at these and other institutions, who benefited from her insight and vision as a teacher, scholar, and institutional leader.

There will be no funeral. A memorial service will be held in January, and announced at a later date.

Arrangements by Chicago Jewish Funerals - Skokie Chapel, 847.229.8822, www.cjfinfo.com.