Marie Edith Borroff (September 10, 1923 – July 5, 2019) was an American poet, translator, and the Sterling Professor of English emerita at Yale University. Life Borroff was born in New York City in 1923, the daughter of professional musicians Marie Bergerson and (Albert) Ramon Borroff, and sister of composer Edith Borroff. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA and MA in 1946, and from Yale University with a Ph.D. in 1956. In 1959, she became the first woman to teach in the English Department at Yale. In 1965, she was the first woman appointed to be an English professor. She retired in 1994. An Endowed Chair at Yale has been named for her. Works References External links "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (lines 1-19)", Norton Anthology of English Literature Guest lecture on Wallace Stevens focusing on the poem The Auroras of Autumn (part of Open Yale Courses). BorroffReadingGawain.com University of Chicago alumni Yale University faculty Yale Sterling Professors 2019 deaths Translators from Old English American women poets 20th-century American poets 20th-century American translators 20th-century American women writers Poets from New York (state) Writers from New York City 21st-century American poets 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American translators 1923 births Women medievalists American women academics Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni