19th 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

Black and white abstract illustration of soldiers with guns lined up

Modernist Studies

19th Century, 20th Century, Comparative Literature, Cinema & Media, History, Literary Studies

Close-up of "Golden Legend," an engraving of angels in various poses designed by Edward Burne-Jones and wood-engraved by W.H. Hooper.

A Digitally-Networked International Conference on Ecology and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Studies

19th Century, Ecology, Religion

Members of the Svoboda Diaries Newbook Project stand in a classroom.

Articles

De-Carbonizing Academic Conferencing

Environmental Humanities, 19th Century, Literary Studies, Language and Literature, Environment

Illustration of the main characters from the novel Little Women

Lots of Love for Little Women

Language and Literature, Literary Studies, 19th Century

People

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

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

Jason Groves (he/him/his)

My teaching and research seeks to address this, our current ecological state of affairs, through multiple lines of inquiry. In particular I have found that a remarkable group of 19th and 20th century German thinkers and writers, who through their literary writings sought to open up the imagination to a geological time scale, might help us to better understand our place in life on Earth and our unique human response-ability for the planet.

19th Century, 20th Century, Anthropocene, German Studies, Performance Studies, Translation Studies

A close-up image of Jesse Oak Taylor wearing a blue shirt and glasses.

Jesse Oak Taylor (he/him/his)

Jesse Oak Taylor is an associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle where he also serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies in English and core faculty for the minor in Environmental Cultures and Values.

19th Century, Anthropocene, Colonialism, Environmental Humanities, Language and Literature

Habiba Ibrahim (she/her/hers)

I am an Associate Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle. My scholarship is in African American Literary Studies of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

19th Century, 20th Century, 21st Century, Black Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminisms, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Identity and Culture, Language and Literature, Literary Studies, Race

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

Liora Halperin stands outside wearing glasses and a blue shirt.

Liora Halperin (she/her/hers)

Prof. Halperin is Associate Professor of International Studies, History, and Jewish Studies, and the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies, at the University of Washington.

19th Century, 20th Century, Cultural Studies, Jewish Studies

Alysse Hotz looks straight ahead while standing in front of a brown wall.

Alysse Hotz (she/her/hers)

Alysse Hotz earned a doctorate from the Department of English in 2022 and was a 20

19th Century, 20th Century, Pedagogy, Public Scholarship, Race

A close-up portrait of Jennifer Smith standing in front of a bookcase.

Jennifer Smith (she/her/hers)

Jennifer Smith was a 2018 Mellon Collaborative Fellow for Reaching New Publics. Her research examines economic development and diversification within the Muckleshoot Nation from the 1960s through the early 2000s.

19th Century, 20th Century, American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Latin America

A close up portrait of Céline Maillard wearing a hat and red scarf.

Céline Maillard (she/her/hers)

Céline Maillard was a 2018 Mellon Fellow for Reaching New Publics.

19th Century, 20th Century, 21st Century, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, Literary Studies

Matthew Childs sits outside on a hill overlooking a body of water.

Matthew Childs (he/him/his)

Matthew Childs is a doctoral candidate in the Department of German Studies. He joined the department in 2015 after receiving his M.A. in German and B.A. in German and Classical Civilizations at Florida State University.

19th Century, German Studies, History, Humanities, Literary Studies

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

Madison Heslop (she/her/hers)

19th Century, 20th Century, Digital Humanities, Environmental Humanities

Portrait of Charles LaPorte wearing glasses and standing in front of a tree.

Charles LaPorte (he/him/his)

Charles LaPorte is a scholar of poetry who specializes in the intersection of literature and religion. With Lori Peterson Branch, he co-edits the new Elements in Literature and Religion since 1500 Series for Cambridge University Press. His books

19th Century, Poetry, Religion

Portrait of Barbara Henry standing in front of a white wall.

Barbara Henry (she/her/hers)

Barbara Henry is associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and is the author of Rewriting Russia: Jacob Goridn's Yiddish Drama (UW, 2011) and co-editor, with Joel Berkowitz, of Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and

19th Century, 20th Century, Language and Literature, Russia, Soviet Union

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

Matthew Poland looks at the camera while wearing green glasses.

Matthew Poland (he/him/his)

I write and teach about the global circulation and remediation of Victorian literature, archives and the history of English studies, and antiracist pedagogy.

19th Century, Textual Studies

A white butch person with glasses smiling in a light brown blazer and blue and white checkered button-up shirt.

Frances O'Shaughnessy (they/them/theirs)

Frances H. O'Shaughnessy is a historian of slavery and empire specializing in nineteenth-century African American history.

Image credit: Wendy Coffman

19th Century, Race