Gillian Paku received her PhD from Harvard University and began teaching at SUNY Geneseo in 2008. She teaches courses primarily in 18th-century literature and literary disability studies, and has published articles for Oxford University Press Handbooks Online and Eighteenth-Century Life. She received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2013, the 2023 Academic Affairs award for Outstanding Commitment to Learning, the 2021 and 2024 Student Association Professor Recognition award, the 2012-2013 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Innovative Course Design Prize, and a Folger Institute / American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Fellowship in 2008.
Paku recently chaired the college working group on an antiracist writing curriculum, is the faculty sponsor for of the Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society, and in 2025 was selected for the inaugural cohort of the SUNY Accessibility Advocates & Allies Faculty Fellowship program.
Classes
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ENGL 366: Lit: Close Reading
A course charting the historical movement of pre-1700 literatures in the British Isles or globally or transnationally. The course emphasizes historical, political and cultural events through which this literature was produced; the development of genres and poetics over time; and changes in language, including for example the ways that English has changed from Old English to Early Modern.
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ENGL 467: Lit: 18th C Disability Studies
A course focused on a narrowly-defined topic, theme, issue, question, approach, scholarly debate, movement, or group of authors in 1700-1900 literature. In addition to helping students to acquire in-depth understanding of the literature, the course stresses the ability to "join the conversation" that is always ongoing among critics and scholars regarding texts, authors, and topics by engaging with secondary sources.