Prof. S. Pearl Brilmyer

S. Pearl Brilmyer’s work lies at the intersection of the history of philosophy, science, and literature with a focus on the nineteenth-century English novel. Other areas of research include theories of will and drive in nineteenth-century German philosophy and science (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud), the history of sexuality, and materialisms old and new.

Her current book project, The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism (forthcoming January 2022 from The University of Chicago Press) develops a literary-theoretical approach to the history of science, advancing a theory of late Victorian realism as a “science of character” committed to understanding what brings characters—literary and natural historical, human and nonhuman—into existence. She is also working on an experimental, annotated edition of Olive Schreiner’s unfinished novel, currently titled The Prism I Hold in My Hand (under contract with Punctum Books). With Filippo Trentin and Zairong Xiang, she is the editor of a special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies entitled “The Ontology of the Couple” (2019). And in 2022 she will edit a special issue of the journal Psychoanalysis and History on the work of Lou Andreas-Salomé.