# Joyce Chaplin James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History ![Joyce Chaplin](/sites/g/files/omnuum4421/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/history/files/chaplin.jpeg?itok=u_v4hhoE) location\_on Robinson Hall, Room 123, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 smartphone [617-496-3597 ]() email laptop\_windows [Personal Website](http://scholar.harvard.edu/joycechaplin/home) laptop\_windows [SoHP ](https://sohp.fas.harvard.edu/) laptop\_windows [Environmental History](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/envihist/home) Office Hours: Wednesdays 3-5pm. Joyce E. Chaplin, BA (Northwestern), MA (Johns Hopkins), PhD (Johns Hopkins), is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History in the [Department of History](https://history.fas.harvard.edu/) at Harvard University, where she teaches the histories of science, climate, colonialism, and environment. She is also an Affiliated Faculty Member in Harvard’s [Department of the History of Science](https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/), an affiliate of the [Department of Landscape Architecture](https://history.fas.harvard.edu/Department%20of%20Landscape%20Architecture) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a Faculty Member of Harvard’s [American Studies Program](http://americanstudies.fas.harvard.edu/), and is on the Faculty Steering Committee for the [Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability](https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/about/). She serves on the Faculty Executive Board of the [Harvard Museums of Science and Culture](https://hmsc.harvard.edu/) and is a Trustee of the [Massachusetts Historical Society](https://www.masshist.org/), the first historical society in the United States (1791). A former Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom, she has taught at six different institutions on two continents, an island, and a peninsula, and in a maritime studies program on the [Atlantic Ocean.](https://www.sea.edu/ships_crew/cramer) Back on dry land, she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and of the American Philosophical Society in 2020. An award-winning author, Professor Chaplin’s major works include [*An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815*](https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807846131/an-anxious-pursuit/) (1993), [*Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676*](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674011229) (2001), [*The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius*](https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/joyce-chaplin/the-first-scientific-american/9780465008858/) (2006), [*Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit*](http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Round-About-the-Earth/Joyce-E-Chaplin/9781416596202) (2012), and (coauthored), [*The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus: Rereading the* Principle of Population](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10747.html) (2016). She is the editor of [*Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: A Norton Critical Edition*](http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=22632) (2012) and [*An Essay on the Principle of Population: A Norton Critical Edition*](http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=22632) (2017), and is a coeditor of two essay collections, [*Food in Time and Place*](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520283589/food-in-time-and-place) (2014) and [*Genealogies of Genius*](https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137497659) (2016). Her work has been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Estonian, and, forthcoming, into Chinese. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the *Times Literary Supplement*, the *New York Times Book Review*, the *London Review of Books*, the *Wall Street Journal* and *Aeon*. Her most recent book is [*The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution*](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374613808/thefranklinstove/) (2025), for which she received a 2018 [Guggenheim Fellowship](https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/joyce-e-chaplin/). Find out more about what she’s been doing or thinking [@joycechaplin.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/joycechaplin.bsky.social) - ## Faculty [Core Faculty](/faculty/core-faculty) - ## Last Initial (Faculty) [C](/first-letter-last-name/c) - ## Geographic Region [Atlantic](/region-study/atlantic) [Europe](/region-study/europe) [North America](/region-study/north-america) [United States](/region-study/united-states) - ## Theme and Methodology [Consumption & Material Culture](/theme/consumption-material-culture) [Early America](/theme/early-america) [Environmental History](/theme/environmental-history) [Global & Transnational](/theme/global-transnational) [Historiography](/theme/historiography) [Intellectual History](/theme/intellectual-history) [Medicine & Health](/theme/medicine-health) [Race](/theme/race) [Science & Technology](/theme/science-technology) - ## Time Period [Early Modern Europe](/time-period/early-modern-europe) [15th & 16th Centuries](/time-period/15th-16th-centuries) [17th & 18th Centuries](/time-period/17th-18th-centuries) [19th Century](/time-period/19th-century)