Megan Gallagher is an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama. Her areas of research include sex and gender in the history of political thought (especially the 17th and 18th centuries), contemporary feminist political theory, and politics and literature. She also has a longstanding interest in the political thought of the French Enlightenment and is currently completing a book manuscript on the role of emotion in the work of Montesquieu and Rousseau. Her next research project explores shifting definitions of political freedom within the history of feminist thought.

She has previously taught at UCLA, Vanderbilt University, and Whitman College. She has held the Carol G. Lederer Postdoctoral Fellowship in Gender Studies at Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and the Clark Dissertation Fellowship at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles. At UA, she teaches courses on feminist political theory and race and gender in the history of political thought.

“Current Trends in the Study of Eighteenth-century Political Thought,” in Research Handbook on the History of Political Thought, eds. Cary J. Nederman and Guillaume Bogiaris (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2023).

“Racial Ambiguity and Paternal Authority in Sarah,” Annales historiques de la Révolution française, forthcoming.

“Wollstonecraft’s Gothic Violence,” Polity, forthcoming.

“Wollstonecraft and the Question of French Character,” Age of Revolutions (October 18, 2021).