Marissa Grunes is a scholar of American literature whose dissertation examines the intersection of architecture and environmentalism in nineteenth-century American culture.

She will earn her PhD from the English Department at Harvard University in the Spring of 2019. Marissa's doctoral work brought together architectural history, aesthetic theory, and environmental history to consider the productive relation between the arts and early environmental thought in the nineteenth-century United States. Marissa's interdisciplinary research has also led her into the medical humanities and the history of science, with work on the emergence of the hospice movement and the cultural history of the Antarctic.

As an Environmental Fellow, Marissa will work under the guidance of Professor James Engell in the English Department on a book about Antarctica for the general reader. Incognita: A Portrait of Antarctica will combine historical research with a synthesis of current ecological, atmospheric, and geophysical findings to offer a journey across the continent. Marissa's goal is to produce a rigorously-researched book that will capture the imagination of curious readers, drawing them into the threatened world of the Antarctic and its power to transform our planet.

Faculty Host

James Engell, English