Lecture by Laura Brown: "Defoe and Newton-Modern Matter"

Brown is a scholar and critic of eighteenth-century literary culture. Author of six books and many scholarly essays, she studies uncertainty and innovation, non-human beings and species difference, and gender, empire, and race in eighteenth-century literary history. Her most recent book, Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Literary Imagination, defines the formative impact of non-human beings in English literary history. Brown joined the department of English at Cornell University in 1981. She holds the John Wendell Anderson chair and has served as chair of the English department, director of the English Ph.D. program, and also as senior vice provost for undergraduate education.