Laura Baudot

Biography

My research and teaching interests center on 18th-century British literature and include history of science, 18th-century British art, and book history. I also regularly offer courses on 18th-century British satire and its cultural heritage.

My interest in book history and 18th-century art has grown as a result of developing teaching strategies aimed at both broadening the appeal of 18th-century literary works and giving students a more vivid sense of historical context.

In my course on the 18th-century British novel, I hold lab sessions in the library’s Special Collections. These labs explore aspects of the 18th-century book rarely studied in a literature course: how it was made, published, sold, and read. I do something similar in my 18th-century survey course, Wits, Rakes, Madmen and Jane. The class meets in the Allen Memorial Art Museum roughly six times in the semester to study 18th-century paintings and prints with a view to exploring the relationship between visual and literary cultures in this period.    

I am currently writing a book about how empirical, philosophical, and religious concepts of empty space and nothingness animate a tradition of18th-century English literary experimentation with the printed book.

Laura Baudot chairs the Educational Plans and Policies Committee (EPPC).