People
Faculty
I specialize in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe (16th-17th centuries), with an emphasis on France. My interests include the history of the book and of education, the history of the disciplines and of scholarship, early modern natural philosophy and its interactions with religion. I am currently working on the ways early modern scholars coped with what they preceived to be an overabundance of books, and in paticular, the kinds of reference works, searching devices and shortcuts in reading and note taking that they devised, ca. 1500-1700.
Selected Publications
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"Disciplinary Distinctions before the 'Two Cultures,'" The European Legacy 13:5 (2008), pp. 577-88, in a special issue on "The Languages of the Sciences and the Languages of the Humanities," ed. Oren Harman.
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Co-edited with Jennifer Milligan, a special issue of Archival Science 7:4 (2007) entitled "Toward a cultural history of archives," with a co-authored introduction, pp. 289-96
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"Textbooks and Methods of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe," in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe, ed. Emidio Campi, Simone de Angelis, Anja-Silvia Goeing and Anthony Grafton (Geneva: Droz, 2008), pp. 39-73.
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"Corrections manuscrites et listes d'errata à la Renaissance," in Esculape et Dionysos. Mélanges en l'honneur de Jean Céard, ed. Jean Dupèbe, Franco Giacone, Emmanuel Naya and Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou (Geneva: Droz, 2008), pp. 269-86.
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"Organizations of Knowledge," in Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 287-303.
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"Science and Religion," in Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 6: Reform and Expansion, 1500-1660, ed. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 427-45.
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"Natural Philosophy" in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 3: Early Modern Science, ed. Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 365-405.
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"Note-Taking as an Art of Transmission," Critical Inquiry 31 (2004), pp. 85-107.
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"Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, ca. 1550-1700," Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), pp. 11-28.
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The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)
Ann Blair
Position: Harvard College Professor, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History
Field: Early Modern Europe
Specialty: Early Modern France; Early Modern European Intellectual and Cultural History; History of the Book; History of Science
Leave:
Contact Info
Center for Government and International Studies-South Building
Room S437
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617.495.0752
Office Hours: Monday 2:00-4:00
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Courses I'm teaching this year
Fall 2009: History 1151: "France 1550-1715"
Fall 2009: History 2121: "Cultural History of Early Modern Europe"
Spring 2010: History 1318: "History of the Book and of Reading"
M W (F) 11:00
Spring 2010: History 81a: "History of Early Modern Europe"
Th 2:00-4:00