The George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation

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. At Penn, she teaches courses on science and literature, queer studies, and literary theory. 

She is the author of The Science of Character: Human Objecthood and the Ends of Victorian Realism (Chicago, 2022) , which won the 2022 Sonya Rudikoff Award for the best first book in Victorian Studies. And she has co-edited two special issues, one with Filippo Trentin and Zairong Xiang in GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies on “The Ontology of the Couple,” and another with Filippo Trentin in the journal Psychoanalysis & History on Lou Andreas-Salomé's 1916 essay, “'Anal' and 'Sexual'” featuring the first English translation of that essay.

Her second book project, Queer Rigidity, explores the tendency of desire to crystallize into patterns and follow well-worn paths and is under contract with the "Theory Q" series at Duke UP. An article from this project, “Queer Rigidity: Habit and the Limits of the Performativity Thesis” was published in Critical Inquiry in 2024, followed by a series of responses to the text. Other recent articles have been published in PMLA, Representations, Criticism, Victorian Studies, and Modern Philology.