Rhi Johnson

Rhi Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University Bloomington (College of Arts & Sciences). They hold a Ph.D. and M.A. in Hispanic Literature from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (2020, 2015), and a B.A. in Foreign Languages and Literatures and Theatre from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (2013).

Research Focus:

• Examines 18th and 19th Century Iberia through lenses of gender, sexuality, and cultural resistance
• Applies New Materialism to analyze intersections between female bodies and natural elements like water
• Investigates medical humanities by studying historical scientific texts for cultural expressions
• Focuses on transatlantic literary and cultural paradigms of modernity

Publication Trends: Their scholarship spans literary analysis, sensory studies, and historical epistemology. Recent work explores symbolic death in romantic literature, olfactory metaphors in social critique, and medical discourse as cultural production.