Rebecca Wilkin

Education

• Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2000
• M.A., University of Michigan, 1996
• B.A., Brown University, 1994

Areas of Emphasis or Expertise

• Early modern women philosophers: Elisabeth of Bohemia, Gabrielle Suchon, Louise Dupin
• Enlightenment political philosophy: equality, freedom, contract theory, rights
• Early modern French philosophy: skepticism, stoicism, Cartesianism
• History of science and medicine: imagination, melancholy, mechanism
• Early modern French Catholicism: mysticism, mission, colonialism

Books

• Louise Dupin’s Work on Women: Selections, co-translated and co-edited with Angela Hunter (Oxford University Press 2023) : View Book
• Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France, co-edited with Lewis Seifert (Routledge 2015) : View Book
• Gabrielle Suchon, A Woman Who Defends All the Persons of Her Sex: Selected Philosophical and Moral Writings, co-translated and co-edited with Domna C. Stanton (University of Chicago Press 2010) : View Book
• Women, Imagination, and the Search for Truth in Early Modern France (Ashgate Publishing Company 2008) : View Book

Selected Articles

• "The Real Consequences of Imaginary Things: Louise Dupin’s Critique of Sexist Historiography,” with Sonja F. Ruud." Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy, edited by Karen Detlefsen and Lisa Shapiro. Routledge 2023: 533-545.
• "Influence, impact, importance: comment ‘mesurer’ la contribution des femmes à l’histoire de la philosophie?” Repenser la philosophie au XVIIe siècle: canons et corpus, edited by Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin." Special issue of XVIIe siècle Vol. 296, 2022: 435-450.
• "Réformez vos contrats!’: From the marriage contract to the social contract in Louise Dupin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau." Women Philosophers in Early Modern France, edited by Derval Conroy. Special issue of Early Modern French Studies Vol. 43, 2021: 88-105.
• "Gender Equality in Cartesian Community: Descartes, Poulain de la Barre, Fontenelle." Towards an Equality of the Sexes in Early Modern France, edited by Derval Conroy. New York and London: Routledge 2021: 39-59.
• "Feminism and Natural Right in François Poulain de la Barre and Gabrielle Suchon." The Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 80, 2019: 227-247.
• "The Querelle des femmes." The Cambridge History of French Thought, edited by Michael Moriarty and Jeremy Jennings. Cambridge University Press 2019: 190–197.
• "Making Friends, Practicing Equality: The Correspondence of Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes." Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France, Routledge 2015: 161-87.
• "Essaying the Mechanical Hypothesis: Descartes, La Forge, and Malebranche on the Formation of Birthmarks." Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-Modern Period Vol. 13:6, 2008: 533-67.
• "Descartes, Individualism, and the Fetal Subject." d i f f e r e n c e s: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies Vol. 19.1, 2008: 96-127.
• "Figuring the Dead Descartes: Claude Clerselier’s L’Homme de René Descartes (1664)." Representations Vol. 83, November, 2003: 38-66.

Accolades

• Florence Howe Award in Foreign Languages, Women’s Caucus for the Modern Languages, for “Making Friends, Practicing Equality: The Correspondence of René Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia,” 2015
• Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Translation or Teaching Edition Award, for Gabrielle Suchon, A Woman who Defends All the Persons of her Sex, with Domna C. Stanton, 2011
• K. T. Tang Award For Excellence in Research 2010

Biography