PAULA BLANK ’81

PAULA BLANK, a longtime professor of English at William & Mary College, died Aug. 21, 2016. She was 57. A professor at William & Mary since 1992, she was internationally known for her scholarship in Early Modern English. She specialized in Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry and poetics, linguistics and literature, Renaissance gender and sexuality. She was the recipient of fellowships from the National Humanities Center (two times), from the Folger Shakespeare Library (two times), and from the American Council of Learned Societies. A highly respected educator on her campus, in 2010 she received the annual Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence, and she served as the Margaret L. Hamilton Professor of English. She had also served on the Modern Language Association’s executive committee and on the advisory board for the publications of the Modern Language Association. Her child, Jae S. Aron ’11, and her former husband, Paul D. Aron ’78, survive.