Laura Brown, Ph.D.
John Wendell Anderson Professor of English
Graduate Faculty Member
- Degrees
- University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D. - Stanford University
B.A.
Bio
Laura Brown joined the faculty at Cornell University in 1981, and has been a member of the Department of English for over twenty-five years. She holds the John Wendell Anderson chair, and has served as chair of the department and director of the graduate program. Professor Brown is a scholar and critic of the English eighteenth century, and she has written on such writers as Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Dryden, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and Daniel Defoe. She studies the role of women in the literary imagination, the relationship between literature and history, the nature of culture, the emergence of imperialist thought, the effects of ideas of racial difference, and the status of animals for the understanding of the human.
Research and Teaching Interests
- Eighteenth-century studies
- Feminist criticism and women’s studies
- Cultural studies
Current Projects
- Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Literary Imagination