Joanna Stalnaker (Ph.D. New York University; B.A. Swarthmore College) works primarily on Enlightenment literature, philosophy, and science with an interdisciplinary focus on intellectual history and literary form. Other interests include sexuality and knowledge, theater and revolution, and the place of women writers in literary history. Her first book, The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia (Cornell University Press, 2010), was awarded the Kenshur Prize from the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University. She has published articles in Representations, Diderot Studies, and Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. Her current project, Enlightenment Endings: Testaments for a Philosophical Age, looks at the last works of the philosophes to ascertain both their intimate view of aging and death and their historical view of the end of their era. She is also co-editing, with Nicholas Cronk, a special volume of the Romanic Review on authorship in eighteenth-century France. She serves on the editorial boards of the Romanic Review and Coulisses, on the MLA Division Executive Committee for Eighteenth-Century French Literature, and on the Board of the Society of Fellows at Columbia University. She teaches a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses, including Rousseau and His Critics, Enlightenment / Counter-Enlightenment, Theater and Revolution, Sexual Enlightenment, French Theater on Stage, and Literature Humanities.

Selected Publications:

“Buffon on Death and Fossils.” Representations 115 (Summer 2011): forthcoming.

The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. Winner of 2010 Kenshur Prize.

“Diderot’s Literary Testament.” Diderot Studies 31 (2009): 45-56.

“The Post-Enlightenment Sketch: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Études de la nature.” Landau-Paris Studies on the Eighteenth Century. Volume 2. Edited by Peter Wagner, Frédéric Ogée, and Achim Hescher. Trier: WVT, 2008. 97-105.

“Staël dans le Panthéon de Sainte-Beuve.” Cahiers staëliens 58 (2007): 83-92.

“L’écriture du moi dans Le Nouveau Paris.” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises. 58 (2006): 107-20.

“The New Paris in Guise of the Old: Louis-Sébastien Mercier from Old Regime to Revolution.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. Volume 35. Edited by Jeffrey Ravel and Linda Zionkowski. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 223-42.

“Painting Life, Describing Death: Problems of Representation and Style in the Histoire naturelle.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. Volume 32. Edited by Ourida Mostefai and Catherine Ingrassia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 193-227.