Professor Nancy Yousef

My research is centered in British and European Romanticism, but also extends to eighteenth century sources and forward into modernity. I am especially interested in the intersections between philosophical writing and literary form, and in the relations among aesthetics, ethics, and representation of the emotions.  

I am a Visiting Research Fellow at Merton for Hilary term 2025, on leave from Rutgers University where I am Distinguished Professor of English. I specialize in literature and philosophy of the Romantic era.  

My most recent book, The Aesthetic Commonplace (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of the commonplace as region of overlooked value in the work of the Romantic poet (William Wordsworth), the realist novelist (George Eliot), and the modern philosopher (Ludwig Wittgenstein) who are best known for their commitment to the ordinary as a resource for reflection on language, thought, and social attunement. I have also published Isolated Cases (Cornell UP, 2004), Romantic Intimacy (Stanford UP, 2013) and essays on figures including Rousseau, Austen, Dickens, and Orwell. 

My current book project, Thinking in Words: Undisciplined Readings in Modern Philosophy, explores the work of twentieth century philosophers in the curious position of being both widely respected and representative of dissident or marginal strains in their discipline, including several who were educated or taught at Oxford in the decades just before and after the second World War.