Carolyn Purnell

Historian & Sensory Expert

Carolyn Purnell is a history instructor, writer, and lover of all things colorful and offbeat. She is the author of The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses (Norton, 2017) and the forthcoming Inventing Color. Carolyn earned her Ph.D. in history from University of Chicago, and her work has appeared in Wall Street Journal, CityLab by The Atlantic, Good Housekeeping, and Apartment Therapy. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Huntington Library, the Georges Lurcy Foundation, the Brown Foundation of Fellows, and the French Society for Historical Studies.