18th Century | Simpson Center for the Humanities

Projects

Eighteenth-century painting depicting a young girl wearing a yellow dress reading.

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century (18/19)

18th Century, 19th Century, Humanities, Interdisciplinary Research

Engraving of a passage from Roman author Virtruvius, featuring the philosopher Aristippus

The Roles of Fiction in Early Modern Philosophy

16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, History, Philosophy

People

Portrait of Leigh Mercer wearing glasses and a dark jacket standing in front of a blue wall.

Leigh Mercer (she/her/hers)

Having completed her first book, Urbanism and Urbanity: The Spanish Bourgeois Novel and Contemporary Customs (1845-1925) (Bucknell UP) in 2013, Professor Mercer is currently finishing another book manuscript, titled An Incoherent Voyage: Spanish Cinema Pioneers, Between Technophilia

18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, Cinema, Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media, Cultural Studies, Hispanic Studies, Language and Literature, Public Scholarship, Spanish & Portugese, Visual Culture

Caitlin Palo

As Program and Events Manager, Caitlin Palo works with faculty to coordinate the material and logistical needs for bringing together scholars from on and off-campus.

18th Century, 20th Century, 21st Century, Communication, Literary Studies, Translation Studies, Writing Studies

José Francisco Robles (he/him/his)

José Francisco Robles is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Washington. He earned a B.A. in Hispanic Literature and an M.A. in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Chile, as well as a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literature at El Colegio de México in 2012.

18th Century, Language and Literature, Latin America, Philosophy, Spanish & Portugese

Geoffrey Turnovsky stands outside wearing a black shirt and grey jacket.

Geoffrey Turnovsky (he/him/his)

Geoffrey Turnovsky specializes in the literary and cultural history of early modern France and Europe, with an emphasis on print culture, early modern media, the profession of authorship, and on readers and publics in the 17th and 18th centuries.

17th Century, 18th Century, Cultural Studies, French & Italian Studies, History, Language and Literature

Juliet Shields (she/her/hers)

Juliet Shields works on the on the intersections among nationality, gender, and race in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and American literature.

18th Century, 19th Century, Digital Humanities, Feminisms

Laura Gehrke stands outside wearing a blue collared shirt and plaid jacket.

Laura Gehrke (she/her/hers)

Laura Gehrke (née Griffith) studies religion and feminism in Victorian novels. Her doctoral dissertation is on women's religious lives in the novels of George Eliot and Charlotte Mary Yonge. She has also worked on Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and R.D. Blackmore.

18th Century, 19th Century, Feminisms, Literary Studies

Portrait of Colin Marshall wearing a blue shirt and glasses.

Colin Marshall (he/him/his)

17th Century, 18th Century, Philosophy

Justin Mohler looks at the camera while sitting in front of a river.

Justin Mohler (he/him/his)

After receiving his BA from Colby College in 2009 and spending several years teaching English abroad in Austria and Hong Kong, Justin joined the department in 2013. His MA thesis addressed modes of perception, recognition, and tolerance in Lessing's Nathan der Weise.

18th Century, 19th Century, Animal Studies