EDUCATION
Ph.D. History Princeton University 1990. Dissertation: "Restaging Jean Bodin: the Universae naturae theatrum (1596) in its cultural context". Committee: Anthony Grafton (Director); Natalie Z. Davis, Princeton University; Nancy G. Siriaisi, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
M.Phil. History & Philosophy of science, Cambridge University 1985
B.A. Summa cum laude, History and Science, Harvard College 1984
Maturité classique, Geneva, Switzerland 1980
POSITIONS HELD
Professor, Dept of History, July 2001- (on leave 2001-2)
John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Dept of History and Committee on Degrees in History and Literature, Harvard University, 1999-2001
Assistant Professor of History and of History and Literature, Harvard University, 1996-99
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of California, Irvine, 1992-96
Lecturer and Acting Head Tutor, Dept of History of Science, Harvard University, 1991-93
TALKS AND CONFERENCES
Scheduled:
"The Commentary as Reference Genre," at a conference at the Herzog August Bibliothek on "Der Kommentar in der fruehen Neuzeit," May 2002
Chairing a session that I organized entitled "Art, Medicine and Science in the Renaissance," at the Renaissance Society of America, Tempe, AZ, April 2002
"Early Modern Attitudes toward Curiosity," American Society of Church History, San Francisco, January 2002; chairing a session on "Scholar-Diplomats in Early Modern Europe" at the AHA, San Francisco, January 2002.
"Readers as Correctors," for a Folger Library conference on "Transactions of the Book," November 2001
"Historiens de la philosophie et des sciences" for the FISIER conference "Les études sur la Renaissance aujourd'hui," Geneva, September 2001
Given:
"'Historia' in Renaissance reference works" in a session which I organized for the Renaissance Society of America, in Chicago, in March 2001, on Natural history and human history in Renaissance France.
"Encyclopedic Curiosity and the Origin of the Fact in Early Modern Europe," talk at the Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University, February 22, 2001.
"Coping with Information Overload 1300-1700" in a symposium on "The Book: Past, Present and Future" in honor of the inauguration of a new building and new curriculum at King's College, Halifax, Jan. 20, 2001.
Chair of a session on "The Uses of Historical Evidence in Early Modern Europe," Boston, January 2001
"Reading strategies for coping with information overload," in a session which I organized for the History of Science Society meeting in Vancouver, in November 2000, on "Coping with information overload in early modern natural philosophy."
The keynote address at the opening of an exhibition at the John J. Burns Library, Boston College, entitled "The Art of the Book from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance," October 12, 2000.
"Coping with information overload in early modern Europe--methods of reading and research," a talk at the Humanities Center, Johns Hopkins University, March 2000.
Comment on papers in a session on the history of the book in the 18th century at the History of Science Society Meeting in Pittsburgh, November 1999.
"Readers and the tools of consultation in early modern Europe," the 69th George Parker Winship Lecture sponsored by the Houghton Library and co-sponsored by the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies, Harvard University, May 1999.
"Reference Works in the Renaissance," in a session entitled "The Book as Artifact" at the Renaissance Society of America, UCLA, March 1999.
"Towards a typology of early modern reference works," at a one-day symposium on encyclopedism at Trinity College, Cambridge, February 1999.
Two seminars and one public lecture on the history of the book at the Ecole des Chartes (invited by Annie Charon-Parent), February 1999.
Two seminars at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (invited by Christian Jacob and by Christian Jouhaud) and a conference paper at the Centre Alexandre Koyré, EHESS, Paris, February 1999.
"The sciences in early modern encyclopedias," paper at the New York Academy of Sciences (history of science division), January 1999.
"Coping with information overload: encyclopedic reference works in early modern Europe," colloquium at the Bunting Institute, Radcliffe College, November 1998.
"The practice of erudition according to Morhof" at a conference on Daniel Georg Morhof at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, September 1998.
"Theaters of knowledge: metaphor and organization in late Renaissance encyclopedias," at a conference on Frances Yates and the Art of Memory at the Einstein Forum, Potsdam, March 1998.
"Bodin's Natural philosophy," at a symposium on recent books on Jean Bodin at the Fondazione Luigi Firpo, Florence, January 1998.
"The search for a pious natural philosophy in the late Renaissance," in a session I organized entitled "New perspectives on science and religion in early modern Europe," History of Science Society meeting, San Diego, November 1997.
"Fortunes vernaculaires d'un genre aristotélicien: les problemata à la Renaissance" for a conference on Latin and the vernaculars at the Institut de Recherches sur l'Histoire des Textes, organized by Luce Giard, June 1997.
Seminars on Bodin at the Institut de Recherches sur l'Histoire des Textes (seminar of Jean-François Maillard), and in the CNRS Seminar of Yves-Charles Zarka, Paris, June 1997.
"Piety and the Limits of Curiosity in Late Renaissance Meteorology," at a conference on the Republic of Letters in the Age of Confessionalism, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, June 1997; and as part of a Sloan Foundation Workshop on "The Abolition of the Unknown and the Rise of Modern Science," held at the Einstein Forum, Potsdam, and the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, June 1997.
"High and Low Aristotle: the problemata in early modern Europe," History Department Colloquium, Johns Hopkins University, March 1997.
"The religious foundations of Bodin's natural philosophy," at the quadricentennial Bodin conference at Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, October 1996.
"Authorship and authority in a learned and popular genre--the problemata," British Society for the History of Science, Edinburgh, July 1996
"From Bodin to Comenius: pious natural philosophy in the early seventeenth century," at a conference on early modern encyclopedism at the Internationales Forschungszentrum in Vienna, June 1996.
Papers at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, on problemata and on the monstrous in early modern natural history.
Seminar on Bodin at the Institut d'histoire des sciences, dir. William Shea, Strasbourg, May 1996.
"Les pratiques érudites du savoir," three seminars at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (in the seminars of Roger Chartier, Giovanna Cifoletti and Eric Brian, and André Burguière), Paris, spring 1996.
"La philosophie naturelle dans l'oeuvre de Bodin" at the quadricentennial conference "L'oeuvre de Jean Bodin," Lyon, January 1996.
"Evolution et longue durée d'un genre scientifique: les problemata à la Renaissance," Groupe d'études du seizième siècle, University of Geneva, October 1995.
"The Genre of the problemata in the Renaissance," at a conference on "Natural philosophy and the Disciplines," Dibner Institute, MIT, May 1995.
"Encyclopedism and the Cultural Context of Natural Philosophy in the Renaissance," in the colloquium series in Science Studies at UC San Diego, May 1995.
Comment on a session entitled "Polymathy, Encyclopedism and Allegory in the Republic of Letters," at the Renaissance Society of America, New York, April 1995.
"La persistance du latin en philosophie naturelle à la fin de la Renaissance," at a conference on "Latin et vernaculaire dans les sciences," at the Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris, November 1994.
"The Example in Early Modern Europe: Between Natural History and History," at a conference at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin on "Examples," May 1994.
"Tradition and Innovation in the work of Jean Bodin and Jean-Cecile Frey," at a conference at the University of Chicago on "Tradition and Innovation in Early Modern Natural Philosophy," April 1994.
"Jean Bodin's Philosophy of Nature," American Historical Association, San Francisco, January 1994, in a session I organized entitled "Reassessing Jean Bodin."
"Authorial Voice in Bodin and Montaigne," History of Science Society, Sante Fe, November 1993.
"The Teaching of Natural Philosophy in Early Seventeenth-Century Paris," History of Science Society, Washington, D.C., December 1992.
"Traditional Aristotelian Teaching in Early Seventeenth-Century Paris: the Example of Jean-Cecile Frey," colloquium presentation at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg VA, March 1992.
"Humanist Methods of Natural Philosophy in Jean Bodin's Universae naturae theatrum," History of Science Society, Madison WI, October 1991, in a session I organized entitled "Humanism and Science."
"The Languages of Natural Philosophy in Late Sixteenth-Century France," Eighth International Congress of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, Copenhagen, August 1991.
"Une approche textuelle de la nature: l'Universae naturae theatrum de Jean Bodin," Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris, January 1991.
"System or Synthesis: the Dilemma of Jean Bodin's Universae naturae theatrum," American Historical Association, New York, December 1990.
"The Natural Philosophy of Jean Bodin," Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Toronto, March 1990.
OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Reviews of book manuscripts for Harvard University Press and of article manuscripts for Isis, Journal of the History of Ideas, Early Science and Medicine, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.
Translator of Frank Lestringant, "Geneva and America in the Renaissance: the Dream of the Huguenot Refuge 1555-1600," Sixteenth-Century Journal 26 (1995), 285-95.
Interviewed for a Coastline Community College Telecourse "Universe: the infinite frontier," episodes on the origins of modern astronomy (first aired September 1994).
Participated in seminar on "History and the Disciplines" (dir. Donald Kelley) at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., August 1993.
Member, American Historical Association, History of Science Society, Renaissance Society of America (discipline representative for the history of science, 1993-96, 2000-3), American Association for Neo-Latin Studies, Société Française des Seiziémistes.
COURSES TAUGHT
at Harvard, in History (1996-)
at UC Irvine, 1993-95:
Undergraduate courses:
Europe 1350-1750 (lower-division lecture course, Fall 1993 and 1994)
Science and Religion from Galileo to Darwin (upper-division lecture, Spring 1994)
France 1500-1750 (upper-division lecture, Fall 1994)
Graduate seminars:
Violence in early modern France (Fall 1993)
Topics in early modern European cultural history (Winter-Spring1994)
The transmission of culture in early modern and modern France (Winter 1995)
one-on-one reading course on Enlightenment Thought
at Harvard, in History of Science, 1991-93:
Introduction to the History of Science (Sophomore Tutorial, "from Plato to NATO," full year 1991-92 and 1992-93)
The Scientific Revolution (lecture course, Fall 1991)
Encyclopedias from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (conference course, Spring 1992)