Nina Baym was Swanlund Professor Emerita of English in the Literature faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she taught from 1963 until her retirement in 2004. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, a master’s degree from Radcliffe, and a PhD from Harvard University. Baym held distinguished positions including director of the School of Humanities from 1976 to 1987, Jubilee Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1988, Swanlund Endowed Chair in 1997, and Center for Advanced Study Professor of English. Her career was marked by major awards and honors such as Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 1982, election to the American Antiquarian Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society, Senior University Scholar in 1985, the 2000 Jay Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Advancing American Literature Study from the Modern Language Association, 2011 Mellon Foundation Emeriti Award, and selection for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Gallery of Excellence in 2013.

A pioneering revisionary historian and critic of American literature, Baym specialized in nineteenth-century writers, women’s fiction, nonfiction prose, and the relations of literary culture to broader American society. Her seminal Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870 (1978, second edition 1993) established the field of study on American women writers and created a macrostructure for understanding their contributions. Key publications include The Shape of Hawthorne’s Career (1976), Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America (1984), Feminism and American Literary History: Essays (1992), American Women Writers and the Work of History, 1790-1860 (1995), American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth-Century Sciences (2002), and Women Writers of the American West, 1833-1927 (2011), which documented over 600 books by more than 340 women. As general editor of the Norton Anthology of American Literature, she broadened its scope to include more women writers. Baym directed 39 PhD dissertations, mentored young scholars and female professors, and was renowned as an exceptional lecturer and teacher who expanded the American literary canon and influenced generations in the field.