Madison R. Wolfert

Bio/Description

Madison R. Wolfert (any pronouns) is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English and Graduate Research Fellow at the Center for Culture, Society and Religion for 2024-2025. Madison is also pursuing a certificate in the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Before coming to Princeton, Madison earned a B.A. from Bowdoin College, completing a project on the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish. Madison’s research interests include trans studies, 17th and 18th century political theory, the environmental humanities, Dutch and German literature, and science fiction. 


Madison’s peer-reviewed article, “The Racial Biopolitics of Sex in the Work of Henry Neville,” can be found in the Autumn 2024 issue of English Literary Renaissance.


Madison’s dissertation project, titled “A Part of that Empire:” Sex, Race, and Labor in the Early Modern Atlantic World” explores the discourses of sex difference enabling the work of empire in the literatures of seventeenth-century Britain, the Netherlands, and their colonies. Reaching across the long seventeenth century, this project brings major writers such as Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Aphra Behn into conversation with non-canonical writers to document how the sexual labor of racialized women and non-normatively sexed populations is made to facilitate the formation of the early modern European nation-state as an imperial entity.


Madison has taught several courses in the Department of English and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, including ENG320: Shakespeare: Toward Hamlet and GSS201: Introduction to Gender & Sexuality Studies. In Fall 2023, Madison designed and co-taught with Professor Russ Leo the interdisciplinary course, ENG384/GSS394: Gender, Sex, and Desire in Early Modernity. Madison will continue to serve as the Department of English Undergraduate Outreach for 2024-2025 and coordinate a science fiction reading group for grad students.