I am an intellectual and cultural historian of Europe, with special interests in the
history of science, scholarship, and religion from the Renaissance through the
Enlightenment. I am currently Associate Professor of History at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst. From 2009 throught 2012 I am directing the university's
Oxford Summer Seminar. Starting in 2010 I am also co-director of the Digital Humanities
Initiative in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. I have previously served as
Graduate Program Director in History. 

I am engaged in several research projects in cultural history and the history of science.
I teach Renaissance and early modern European history, history of science, and history of
religion. You can also see my profile for the history department and my curriculum vitae
(PDF file). 

My book The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe was published on
June 1, 2006, by the University of Chicago Press. It has been favorably reviewed in
Nature (PDF file), TLS, New Scientist, and a dozen academic journals. It received
honorable mention (2nd place) in the History of Science category in the Association of
American Publishers’ 2006 Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division Awards for
Excellence (see the AAP's press release). A paperback edition was released in March
2008.

Books

The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (2006)

Out of the diverse traditions of medical humanism, classical philology, and natural philosophy, Renaissance naturalists...

 

Unpublished Papers

PDF

Collection, conviction, and contemplation: or, Picturing coins in early modern books, ca. 1550-1700 (2003)

This paper explores the uses of published illustrations of coins in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century antiquarian...

 

PDF

Exemplarity and the use of antiquity in Erasmus (2001)

This paper explores Erasmus’s creative response to the tension between his idealization of antiquity and...