Jennifer Golightly is a literary historian and digital humanist who specializes in the literature and cultural history of the long eighteenth century. She is the author of a scholarly monograph,The Family, Marriage, and Radicalism in British Women's Novels of the 1790s, published by Bucknell University Press in 2011. More recently, she has published chapters in two edited collections: "Reproduction in the Novels of the 1790s" inThe Secrets of Generation: Reproduction in the Long Eighteenth Century(University of Toronto Press, 2015) and "Gender Performance and the Spectacle of Female Suffering in Emma Corbett," which appeared inTransatlantic Women Travelers, 1688-1843(Bucknell University Press, 2021). She is primarily interested in women's history and writing by women over the long eighteenth century, as well as in the history of fashion, animals, gender, and sexuality.
Currently, Jennifer is working on a project for which she has been awarded the Émilie du Châtelet prize through the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Women's Caucus. The project examines gender non-conforming heroines in sentimental novels of the later eighteenth century and their role in the marriage plot that form the basis of these novels. In addition, Jennifer works with Professor Tip Ragan on Policing Male Homosexuality in 18th-Century Paris, a qualitative digital project examining the surveillance of men suspected of same-sex sexual practice over the course of the century in Paris.
Jennifer serves at Digital Teaching & Research Specialist and lecturer in History at Colorado College. She provides support to students and faculty using digital tools for teaching, classroom projects, and research, in addition to administering Canvas and a variety of other digital liberal arts software applications.