Emily Dickinson Blake Vermeule (born July 14, 1966), commonly known as Blakey Vermeule is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 scholar of eighteenth-century British literature and theory of mind

Theory of mind

Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own...

. She is a Professor of English at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

.

Biography

Vermeule is the daughter of classicist Emily Vermeule

Emily Vermeule

Emily Dickinson Townsend Vermeule was an American classical scholar and archaeologist.-Biography:She was born on August 11, 1928 in New York City. She earned an undergraduate degree at Bryn Mawr College in 1950, and earned a master's degree from Radcliffe College in 1954, and a Ph.D. from Bryn...

 and former Museum of Fine Arts curator Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III

Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III

Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III was a scholar of ancient art and curator of classical art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1957 to 1996.-Biography:...

. Her brother, Adrian Vermeule

Adrian Vermeule

Adrian Vermeule, who is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, has been Professor of Law at Harvard Law School since 2006 and was named John H. Watson Professor of Law in 2008. He was a Visiting Professor of Law in 2005...

, is a professor at Harvard Law School.

Her research interests include British literature from 1660–1800, critical theory, major British poets, post-Colonial fiction, the history of the novel, the cognitive underpinnings of fiction, and human evolutionary psychology. Her recent work has focused on Darwinian literary studies

Darwinian literary studies

Darwinian Literary Studies is a branch of literary criticism that studies literature in the context of evolution by means of natural selection, including gene-culture coevolution...

.

Vermeule previously taught at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 and Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

.

Education

Ph.D. English Literature, University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, 1995
B.A. English, summa cum laude, Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, 1988

Works

• The Party of Humanity: Writing Moral Psychology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2000) ISBN 0801864593
• Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? (2009) ISBN 0801893607