Professor Merrim's research interests include colonial Latin American historiography, the Baroque, early modern women's writing, Latin American existentialism, and contemporary North and South American literatures.

Professor Merrim's research deals with the early modern and modern periods, focusing on Latin America. She is presently working on Latin American existentialist fiction.  Other major publications include the following:

The Spectacular City, Mexico, and Colonial Hispanic Literary Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Received the Modern Language Association Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding work in Hispanic Studies.

Entry on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the Encyclopedia Britannica

"Spectacular Cityscapes of Baroque Spanish America." Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Comparative History. Eds. Mario J. Valdés and Djelal Kadir. Vol. 3.  New York: Oxford UP, 2004: 31-57.

Early Modern Women's Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz . Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 1999, 360 pp. (Published in Europe by the University of Liverpool Press).

"The First Fifty Years of Hispanic New World Historiography: The Caribbean, Mexico and Central America," The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature. Eds. Roberto González Echevarría and Enrique Pupo-Walker.  Vol. 1.  Cambridge UP, 1996.

Feminist Perspectives on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz . Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 200 pages, 1991. Reprinted, 1999.

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John Rowe Workman Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities, Brown University, 2006

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New World historiography; seventeenth-century women's writing in English, Spanish, and French; contemporary and modern Latin American literatures; North and South American literatures; Existentialism; Mexican literature and intellectual history.