S. Pearl Brilmyer's current book project, The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism, brings together work in character studies, science studies, and post-humanist theory to develop a conception of character as an impersonal material substrate distinct from subjectivity. It does so through readings of late Victorian realist novels and sketches by George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Olive Schreiner, and other New Realists of the 1880s and ’90s. S. Pearl Brilmyer is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. 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 the author of various essays on Victorian literature and culture published in venues such as PMLA, Representations, Criticism, and Victorian Studies.
