Katherine Mannheimer

Katherine Mannheimer serves as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Rochester, specializing in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature with particular expertise in print culture, book history, and histories of reading.

Her research investigates how visual elements and typographical design functioned pedagogically in eighteenth-century texts, especially satire. She argues that Augustan writers like Pope and Swift used elaborate print designs not merely as decorative elements but as interactive media that trained readers in visual literacy. Her current project examines representations of reading practices on the late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century stage.

Dr. Mannheimer's publications reveal a consistent focus on the material aspects of texts and their relationship to reader experience. Her work spans analyses of Alexander Pope, John Gay, Aphra Behn, and other key figures of the period, examining how print technologies, visual elements, and textual design shaped literary meaning and interpretation. She has demonstrated how satirists navigated tensions between visual and textual elements in an era of rapidly evolving print culture.

Her scholarship bridges literary analysis with book history, gender studies, and visual culture, revealing how eighteenth-century writers employed typography as a dynamic medium that taught readers both to see and to see themselves seeing. Her work has significantly contributed to understanding the pedagogical dimensions of visual design in early modern print culture.