Dr. Jean E. Pickering, a feminist literary scholar and professor emerita of English, passed away on Sept. 15. She was 87.

According to Dr. Lisa Weston, chair of the Department of English, generations of students will remember Pickering as “a fiercely passionate teacher of writing,” a writer of both fiction and memoir, as well as a scholar of modern and contemporary British literature. She taught literature and writing courses at Fresno State from 1970 to 2004.

Pickering was the second woman to chair the English department, since the transformation of the Fresno Normal School into Fresno State. In the early 1970s, she was one of only three women — along with Dr. Lillian Faderman and Dr. Judith Rosenthal — on the tenure track in the department, alongside 30 men. Weston said Pickering mentored younger female colleagues, many of whom she recruited to campus in the 1980s.

Pickering’s work continues to be widely read and cited, particularly the 1997 anthology “Narratives of Nostalgia, Gender, and Nationalism,” co-edited with Suzanne Kehde, published by NYU Press. Her essay in the book interrogates the official American narratives about the D-Day landing, on the landmark event’s 50th anniversary, June 6, 1994. Pickering was also an expert on the British novelist Doris Lessing. Her best-known book is 1990’s “Understanding Doris Lessing,” published by the University of South Carolina Press.

Born in East London in 1933, Pickering emigrated from the U.K. to the United States in 1954 after graduating from the University of London, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen. She earned a master’s degree from San Francisco State, and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

No services were held. Read an extended remembrance on the College of Arts and Humanities blog.