Emily Rolfe Grosholz

Emily Rolfe Grosholz is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy, English, and African American Studies at Pennsylvania State University. She holds affiliations with the Center for Fundamental Theory and the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos. Her interdisciplinary work bridges literary studies, philosophy, and mathematics. Born in 1950, she earned a B.A. from the University of Chicago (1972) and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University (1978).

Her research focuses on American literature post-1900, creative writing, modernist studies, and race/ethnicity studies. Recent publications include Great Circles: The Transits of Mathematics and Poetry (Springer, 2018) and The Stars of Earth: New & Selected Poems (2017). Her poetry has been translated into multiple languages and adapted into music and dance.

Awardees include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1988), NEH and ACLS fellowships, and a Research in Paris Grant (2011). She serves on editorial boards for journals like Journal of the History of Ideas and Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. She actively participates in summer writing conferences such as Writing the Rockies and Bridges.