Karen Bloom Gevirtz, PhD

ABOUT ME

My happy place, intellectually speaking, is at the intersection of the humanities, particularly literature, and science. My PhD is in 17th- and 18th-century British Literature, and I investigate the connections between the Scientific Revolution and the writing of that time. How did the Scientific Revolution’s new ideas and new definition of knowledge affect what was written, how it was written, and who wrote it?

I share this refusal to choose between text and science with my late grandfather, who taught me to suspect categories, be boldly curious, and read everything. He was a physician who read widely, a city doctor with a farm in the Catskills. In high school, I wrote for the literary magazine and loved physics. In college, I earned a BA in English and worked in a neurochemistry lab. I study texts such as letters, recipe books, and diaries, not just literature. I would rather use the term "philosophical revolution" instead of “scientific revolution,” because like other scholars I know that science did not exist until the nineteenth century. And if "philosophical revolution" had the same name recognition, I would. (Comprehensibility – a big plus for a writer).

After a few decades as a professor of English, I stepped away from academia. Now I research and write for a general audience, not a handful of specialists. What is the good of discovering things and reaching new insights without sharing it? When I am not working, I spend time with my family and nurture my pollinator garden. Whenever possible, I watch the stars.