It is with great sadness that the Portland State University community mourns the loss of Amy Elizabeth “Eliza” Greenstadt, Ph.D., a beloved faculty member in the School of Film, who passed away on February 9, 2024.
Eliza Greenstadt brought her passion for learning and her forward thinking approach to Portland State University in 2001, when she joined the English department. During her first fifteen years at PSU, she taught topics in English as well as Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. During that time, she received the John Eliot Allen Outstanding Teacher Award twice, in 2008 and 2012. She also served a term as the Director of Literary Studies, advising both graduate and undergraduate students.
Her adventurous approach and eagerness to push the boundaries of learning took her classes to interesting places, such as when she brought her students to a correctional facility to collaborate with incarcerated women as fellow classmates on a project to imagine utopian societies. In another example, she took a class of students to see Shakespeare performed by incarcerated actors in southern Oregon. Greenstadt sought to engage others in building and fostering a community of learning unmarred by boundaries, truly embodying PSU’s motto, “Let knowledge serve the city.”
Painting by Eliza GreenstadtMarie Lo, chair of the English department, remembers her fondly. “Amy Eliza was a kind, thoughtful colleague who lived by her principles,” she said. “She was deeply committed to PSU's mission as an access university, and her care and concern for her students animated all aspects of her work. She was also an accomplished painter and artist, and her creativity was reflected in her playful and colorful fashion sense. I admired her greatly and will miss her very much.”
"Eliza was the mastermind behind a number of innovations to the English department governance structure and was also instrumental in our ability to argue for more tenure lines during difficult budget years,” said Jennifer Ruth, a colleague of Dr. Greenstadt in both the English department and the School of Film. “She changed Portland State for the better in so very many ways."
In 2016, Dr. Greenstadt moved to the School of Film, bringing her unique perspectives on gender, sexuality, and social issues to her pedagogy in film analysis. She made invaluable research contributions during the brief five years she worked at the School of Film, especially in the areas of Shakespeare, early modernism, and queer studies. She retired in 2021, earning emeritus status.
“Faculty like Dr. Eliza Greenstadt—who demonstrated such exceptionally high levels of scholarship, innovative pedagogy, commitment, and dedication over a relatively short period of time—are extremely rare,” said Leroy Bynum, Jr., Dean of the College of the Arts. “The faculty, staff, and students in the College of the Arts have been fortunate to know her and learn from her. Her passing is a great loss for all of us.”
Dr. Greenstadt’s love of learning began early on in her life, and she approached the world with a natural curiosity and generous spirit at a young age. She began her academic career at Wesleyan University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies. During that time, she also had the opportunity to study at Oxford and travel to Kenya, experiences which shaped her ideas of feminism, sparked her passion for social justice, and served as a foundation for her later scholarly pursuits.
Dr. Greenstadt went on to earn her master’s and doctorate degrees in English from UC Berkeley. The dissertation she wrote during that time, which she later shaped into a book, Rape and the Rise of the Author: Gendering Intention in Early Modern England, is still being taught in classes there to this day.
Eliza Greenstadt published numerous additional scholarly works, including “Balthazar’s Beard : Looking (Again) Into the Merchant’s Closet,” “Strange Insertions in The Merchant of Venice,” “The Kindest Cut: Circumcision and Queer Kinship in The Merchant of Venice,” A Reader’s Guide to Mary Wroth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, “Margaret's Beard,” and “Aemilia Lanyer’s Pathetic Phallacy.”
“Eliza loved teaching and getting into the weeds about all things university governance,” said Courtney Hermann, professor and director of the School of Film. “She was a lifelong learner and academic. As recently as February 1st, she sent out an email to her mailing list, excitedly describing her work on several projects including an article tracing the history of translations of Plato from Greek into Latin.”
Dr. Greenstadt was an active member of Congregation Shir Tikvah. Contributions in her memory may be made to Rust College and/or the Chickasaw Foundation.