Paula Leverage
- Associate Professor // French // SLC
- Associate Professor // Medieval and Renaissance Studies // SIS
- Associate Professor // Comparative Literature // SLC
- Associate Professor // Cornerstone
- Affiliated Faculty // Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies // SIS
- Affiliated Faculty // Film and Video Production // Rueff School
Research Focus
NeuroHumanities, Literature- especially French language literature, Film Studies, Medieval Literature and Language-especially Old French, Medievalism
Office and Contact
Education
B.A. Hons., University of Cambridge; M.A., University of Cambridge; M.A., University of Warwick; Ph.D., University of Toronto
Biography
Paula Leverage is Associate Professor of French and Medieval Studies, and Director of the Center for NeuroHumanities, at Purdue University, and 2nd Vice President of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts. She is a graduate of Cambridge University and the University of Toronto, where she first discovered cognitive theory as a doctoral student and Commonwealth Scholar. She is the author of Memory and Reception: A Cognitive Approach to the Chansons de Geste (Rodopi, 2010), and co-editor of Theory of Mind and Literature (Purdue University Press, 2010; second, revised and expanded edition, 2026). Her second monograph, Narrative, Cognition and Community: The Human Reader is in press with Routledge. She has also published extensively on memory, theory of mind, and creativity in journals such as Leonardo,Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, and French Review. Enquiries from prospective graduate students with interests in the neurohumanities, literature and film are welcome.