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Natalie Phillips is an Associate Professor of English at Michigan State University, affiliated with the Cognitive Science Program and co-director of the Digital Humanities Literary Cognition Lab (DHLC). Her work focuses on 18th-century literature, cognitive approaches to fiction, and disability studies. Her book, Distraction: Problems of Attention in Eighteenth-Century Literature, traces the evolution of Enlightenment ideas about the unfocused mind and how these concepts influenced literary forms. Phillips is a leading figure in the emerging field of literary neuroscience, conducting interdisciplinary experiments using neuroscientific tools such as fMRI and eye-tracking to understand cognitive dynamics during literary reading. Current research projects include an fMRI study on literary attention to Jane Austen, a study on the pleasures of poetry reading, and a cross-cultural investigation of narrative perceptions in music. Phillips' work has been published in high-impact collections and has been featured by major media outlets such as NPR and BBC. She has received numerous national and international research grants and has been recognized with awards for outstanding faculty contributions to undergraduate research and innovation in teaching.
Department of Psychology