Natania Meeker

Tenure Track Appointments

• Associate Professor, French and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California, 01/2009 –
• Associate Professor, Department of French and Italian, University of Southern California, 08/2006 – 12/2008
• Assistant Professor, Department of French and Italian, University of Southern California, 08/2000 – 07/2006

Visiting and Temporary Appointments

• Professeur invité, Université de Paris Est, Marne la Vallée, 05/2015 – 07/2015

Summary Statement of Research Interests

My research and teaching interests include animated and animating plants, vegetal ontologies, plant art and media, materialisms old and new, feminist theory and thought, and the Enlightenment, broadly conceived. I recently completed a co-authored book with Antónia Szabari entitled Radical Botany: Plants and Speculative Fiction (Fordham University Press, 2020). My 2006 book, Voluptuous Philosophy: Literary Materialism in the French Enlightenment, was also published with Fordham. My current book in progress, Illusion Without Error, explores feminine materialism and materialist femininity from the eighteenth century through to the present day. I am also editor, with Jean O’Barr and Eugenia C. DeLamotte, of the anthology Women Imagine Change: A Global Anthology of Women’s Resistance, 600 B.C.E. to the Present (Routledge, 1997) and the coeditor of two special issues, including a forthcoming issue of L’Esprit Créateur on “Libertine Botany” (with Antónia Szabari).

Research Specialties

radical botany; vegetal ontology; materialisms; feminisms, gender, and sexuality; libertine literature; Enlightenment; Epicureanism

Book

• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2020). Radical Botany: Plants and Speculative Fiction. New York: Fordham University Press.
• Meeker, Natania and Caroline Trotot (Ed.). (2016). Womens Portraits of the Self: Representing Knowledge and Making Humanity in Early Modernity. (Vol. 6, Arts et Savoirs.
• Meeker, N. (2006). Voluptuous Philosophy: Literary Materialism in the French Enlightenment. New York: Fordham University Press.
• Meeker, N., O’Barr, J., DeLamotte, E. (1997). Women Imagine Change: A Global Anthology of Women’s Resistance, 600 B.C.E. to the Present. New York: Routledge.

Book Chapters

• Meeker, N. (2023). “‘The art of self-deception’: Libertine Materialism and Roman Philosophy”. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy pp. 599-614. Oxford University Press.
• Meeker, N. (2022). “The Vegetal Subjects of Feminist Speculative Fiction”. Ecologies of Gender pp. 34-50. New York: Routledge.
• Meeker, N. (2021). “An Epicurean Community of Women: A Response to Julie Giovacchini”. Women’s Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Phil. pp. 123-129. New York: Springer Publishing.
• Meeker, N. (2019). “Lucrèce au féminin au dix-huitième siècle: La femme épicurienne et le Discours sur le bonheur d’Émilie du Châtelet”. Femmes à l’oeuvre dans la construction des savoirs pp. 85-100. Le LISAA éditeur.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2017). “Gender and Sexuality in Botanical Contexts”. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Gender pp. 153-169. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Meeker, N. (2014). “Sade at the End of the World”. Sade’s Sensibilities pp. 119-140. Lewsiburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
• Meeker, N. (2012). “Engendering Epicurean Modernities: Epicurean Women from Lucretius to Rousseau”. Dynamic Reading pp. 133-161. New York NY: Oxford University Press.
• Meeker, N. (2009). “Sexing Epicurean Materialism in Diderot”. (Vol. 12) pp. 85-104. Oxford/Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century.
• Meeker, N. (2004). “Sade contre Freud: Stanley Kubrick reevalue le sujet libertin”. pp. 259-274. Lire Sade/Editions l’Harmattan.
• Meeker, N. (2003). “Les troubles du lecteur selon La Mettrie”. pp. 243-255. Des Alexandries II. Les metamorphoses du lecteur/Editions Bibliotheque nationale de France.

Essay

• Meeker, N. (2021). “Thinking about Sex with Plants”. The Philosophical Life of Plants website. Essay available here.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2020). “Becoming Still”. STRP Festival website. Essay available here.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2018). “The Horrors and Pleasures of Plants Today: Vegetal Ontology and _Stranger Things_”. the b2o review.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2015). “Collective Intimacies: Feeling Like a Bee”. (Kristina Newhouse, Ed.). pp. 25-33. Long Beach, CA. California State University, Long Beach/Casa Marengo.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2014). “Who Will Remember Us?: Plants and the Archive”. pp. 151-154. Oxford Literary Review.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2012). “Strawberries on Life Support”. Los Angeles Review of Books.
• Meeker, N. (2011). “Eighteenth-Century Arts of Love”. pp. 110-115. Eighteenth-Century Life.
• Meeker, N. (2007). “My Sade” (review essay). pp. 667-671. Eighteenth-Century Studies/Johns Hopkins University Press.

Encyclopedia Article

• Meeker, N. (2006). “Eighteenth-Century France”. (Gaetan Brulotte and John Phillips, Ed.).pp. 481-488. Vol. 1 Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature/Taylor & Francis.
• Meeker, N. (2006). “Eroticism and Philosophy in Literature”. (Gaetan Brulotte and John Phillips, Ed.). Vol. 1028-1031 Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature/Taylor & Francis.
• Meeker, N. (2006). “Julien Offray de la Mettrie”. (Gaetan Brulotte and John Phillips, Ed.). Vol. 745-747 Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature/Taylor & Francis.
• Meeker, N. (2005). “Paul Henri Dietrich Thiry, Baron d’Holbach”. (Samia Spencer, Ed.). Vol. 256-261 http://www.galenet.com/: Dictionary of Literary Biography: Writers of the French Enlightenment I/Bruccoli Clark Layman, Gale Research, Inc..
• Meeker, N. (2005). “Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis”. (Samia Spencer, Ed.). Vol. 32-38 http://www.galenet.com/: Dictionary of Literary Biography: Writers of the French Enlightenment II/Bruccoli Clark Layman, Gale Research, Inc..

Journal Article

• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2022). “Libertine Botany: Plant/Human Intimacies, Early Modern to Modern”. L’Esprit Créateur. Vol. 62 (4), pp. 1-10.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2022). “Plant Pleasures and Intimacies with Céline Baumann”. L’Esprit Créateur. Vol. 62 (4), pp. 150-159.
• Meeker, N. (2020). “Ecologies of Enlightenment”. Eighteenth-Century Fiction. Vol. 32 (4 (Summer 2020)), pp. 619-629.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2018). “Libertine Botany: Vegetal Sexualities, Vegetal Forms”. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies. Vol. 9 (2018), pp. 478-489.
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2016). “Inhabiting Flower Worlds: The Botanical Art of Madeleine Françoise Basseporte”. Arts et Savoirs. (6)
• Meeker, N., Szabari, A. (2012). “From the Century of the Pods to the Century of the Plants: Plant Horror, Politics, and Vegetal Ontology”. Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture. Vol. 34 (1)
• Meeker, N. (2012). “Libertine Lucretius”. Rivista di storia della filosofia. Vol. 2012 (2), pp. 225-239.
• Meeker, N. (2007). “‘Flowers Strewn on the Way to Volupte’: The Materialist Tropes of La Mettrie”. The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation/Texas Tech UP. Vol. 48 (3), pp. 245-262.
• Meeker, N., Thompson, H. (2007). “Introduction: Empiricism, Substance, Narrative”. The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation/Texas Tech University Press. Vol. 48 (3), pp. 183-186.
• Meeker, N. (2006). “‘I resist it no longer’: Enlightened Philosophy and Feminine Compulsion in _Therese philosophe_”. Eighteenth-Century Studies/Johns Hopkins University Press. Vol. 39.3, pp. 363-376.
• Meeker, N. (2006). “Lire et devenir: The Embodied Reader and Feminine Subjectivity in Eighteenth-Century France”. The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation/Texas Tech UP. Vol. 47 (1), pp. 39-57.
• Meeker, N. (2003). “‘All Times are Present to Her'”: Femininity, Temporality, and Libertinage in Diderot’s ‘Sur les femmes'”. Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies/Florida State UP. Vol. 3 (2), pp. 68-100.
• Meeker, N. (1995). “Rethinking the Universal, Reworking the Political: Postmodern Feminism and the Enlightenment”. Women in French Studies/Association of Women in French Studies. Vol. 3 (1995), pp. 21-33.

• Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, 2017 –
• Borchard Foundation Scholar-in-Residence Grant, Spring 2022
• USC-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute Fellowship, Fall 2021
• Winner of 2019 Science Fiction & Technoculture Studies book prize for Radical Botany, with Antónia Szabari, 2019-2020
• USC Mellon Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Graduate Students, 2013-2014
• Provost’s Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant, 2008-2009
• USC-Huntington Library Early Modern Studies Institute Fellowship, Fall 2006
• USC or School/Dept Award for Teaching, USC General Education Teaching Award for Arts and Letters 100, 2005-2006
• USC Innovative Teaching Award, USC CET Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching Award, 07/2005 – 07/2006
• Camargo Foundation Residential Grant, 01/2004 – 06/2004
• Clark Library Short-Term Fellowship, Fall 2003
• USC Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund Award, 07/2001 – 07/2002
• Chateaubriand Fellowship, 1996 – 1997

Administrative Appointments

• Director of Undergraduate Studies, Comparative Literature, 2017 –
• Director of Graduate Studies, French and Italian, 2004 – 12/2008

Administative Appointment

• Chair, French and Italian, 2013 – 2015
• Chair, French and Italian, 2009 – 2011

Editorships and Editorial Boards

• Member, Editorial Board, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 2019 –
• Member, Advisory Board, Itinéraires. Littérature, textes, cultures, 2016 –
• Guest Editor (with Antónia Szabari); special issue on “Libertine Botany”, L’Esprit Créateur, 2022-2023
• Member, Advisory Board, Eighteenth Century Studies, 07/2011 – 07/2014
• Guest Editor (with Helen Thompson); special issue on “Empiricism, Substance, Narrative”, The Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation, 2006 – 2007

Professional Offices

• Member, MLA Executive Committee of the Forum on Comparative Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, 01/2015 – 01/2020
• Divisional representative, MLA Division on Philosophical Approaches to Literature, 08/2011 – 01/2014