Peter N. Miller is President of the American Academy in Rome. He was Professor of Cultural History and then Dean at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City between 2001 and 2023. He is the author of a series of books on the early seventeenth-century antiquarian, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc, on the history of antiquarianism, and on the modern study of objects as evidence.
He co-curated Dutch New York Between East and West: The World of Margarieta van Varick (BGC, 2009), What Is the Object? (BGC, 2022) and Conserving Active Matter (BGC, 2022). His next book is the extended version of his 2023 Ernst Gombrich Lectures, On Conservation as a Human Science (Princeton University Press). His main current interest is in the how and why of research, whether done by professional historians or by curators, conservators or artists. Miller previously taught at the University of Cambridge, University of Chicago and University of Maryland, College Park. He was a research fellow at the Warburg Institute and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Marseille and École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
A downloadable version of Miller’s curriculum vitae is available here. PDF versions of publications are also available for download here.
Scholarly Career
Grants, Prizes and Academic Honors
2023 Ernst Gombrich Lectures, Warburg Institute, London
2023 Professeur invité, École Normale Superieure, Paris
2012 Professeur invité, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Marseille
2003–2004 John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Fellowship: “The meaning of Fabri de Peiresc’s oriental studies”
2003 Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, Fellow
1999–2000 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Adjunct Fellow
1998–2003 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Fellow
1997–1998 Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin/ Institute for Advanced Study, Fellow
1996–1997 National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship for University Teachers
1996–1997 American Council of Learned Societies, Fellowship (declined)
1996-1997 Rome Prize (runner-up)
1996 Frances Yates Fellowship, Warburg Institute, University of London (Spring)
1995 American Philosophical Society grant for “Peiresc, Oriental studies and Cultural History in the Seventeenth Century”
1995 East-West Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Summer fellow, Münster, Germany
1993 Foundation for Intellectual History, Folger Library, Fellowship
1991 Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation grant for “Friendship and Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice”
1990 Elected to Research Fellowship, Clare Hall, Cambridge
1987 Elected to External Research Studentship, Trinity College, Cambridge
1986 Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for best senior thesis, Harvard College: “Sovereignty and Obligation in Republican England: The Political Thought of the Engagement Controversy”
Publications
Books
2024 On Conservation as a Human Science. Ernst Gombrich Lectures. Princeton University Press
2023 Newspaper Weather Maps and History. MER Books
2017 History and its Objects: Antiquarianism and Material Culture Since 1500. Cornell University Press
2015 Peiresc’s Mediterranean World. Harvard University Press
2015 L’Europe de Peiresc: Savoir et vertu au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel) (=translation of Peiresc’s Europe)
2012 Peiresc’s Orient: Antiquarianism as Cultural History in the Seventeenth Century. Ashgate/Variorum
2011 Peiresc’s History of Provence and the Discovery of a Medieval Mediterranean. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 101
2000 Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century. Yale University Press
Winner, Concours des Antiquités de la France, 2ème médaille, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (2002)
Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, American Philosophical Society (2001)
1994 Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press (paperback 2004).
1992 The Song of the Soul: Understanding "Poppea". Royal Musical Association (with Iain Fenlon).
Edited volumes
2023 What is Conservation? BGC X-Books
2022 Richard Tuttle: What is The Object? Bard Graduate Center
2022 Conserving Active Matter. With Soon Kai Poh. Cultural Histories of the Material World 9. Bard Graduate Center
2021 The Museum in the Cultural Sciences: Collecting, Displaying, and Interpreting Material Culture. Cultural Histories of the Material World 8. Bard Graduate Center
2021 What is Research? BGC X-Books
2013 World Antiquarianism. With Alain Schnapp, Lothar von Falkenhausen and Tim Murray. Getty Publications
2013 Cultural Histories of the Material World. Cultural Histories of the Material World 3. University of Michigan Press
2013 The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography. Cultural Histories of the Material World 2. University of Michigan Press
2012 Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800. Cultural Histories of the Material World 1. With François Louis. University of Michigan Press
2009 Dutch New York Between East and West: the World of Margrieta van Varick. With Deborah Krohn. Yale University Press
Runner-up, Annual Award for Outstanding Exhibition Catalogue, Association of Art Museum Curators (2009); Moe Prize for catalogue of distinction, New York State Historical Association (2011)
2007 Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences University of Toronto Press
2002 Walter Benjamin’s New York. http://resources-bgc.bard.edu/research/projects/pmiller/benjamin.html
1993 Political Writings: Joseph Priestley. Cambridge University Press
Peer reviewed articles
2014 “From Spain to India Becomes A Mediterranean Society. The Braudel-Goitein ‘Correspondence’ Part II,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 56 (2014), 112-35
2013 “La Méditerranéee de Peiresc: ce que les enseignements du XVIIe siècle apportent au XXIe” Académie des Inscriptions & Belles Lettres. Comptes Rendus (2013), 861-72
2010 “Peiresc’s Ethiopia: How? and Why?,” Lias, 37 (2010), 55-88
2009 “The Ancient Constitution and the Genealogist: Momigliano, Pocock, and Peiresc’s Origines Murensis Monasterii (1618).” Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts 1, no. 1 (May 1, 2009): http://arcade.stanford.edu/rofl/ancient-constitution-and-genealogist-momigliano-pocock-and-peiresc%E2%80%99s-origines-murensis
2008 “When Humanity was in the Humanities: Peiresc in the 1630s,” Common Knowledge, 14 (2008), 136-42
2007 “Lost and Found,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, 97 (2007), 502-7
2006 “History of Religion Becomes Ethnology: Some Evidence from Peiresc’s Africa,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 675-96
2005 “Peiresc’s Europe: Then and Now,” Nexus 42 (2005), 161-74 [in Dutch]
2002 “Nazis and Neo-Stoics: The Work of Otto Brunner and Gerhard Oestreich before and after the Second World War,” Past & Present, 176 (2002), 144-86
2001 “Taking Paganism Seriously: Anthropology and Antiquarianism in Early Seventeenth-Century Histories of Religion,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, 3 (2001), 183-209
“Friendship and Conversation in Seventeenth-Century Venice,” Journal of Modern History, 73 (2001), 1-31
“Stoics Who Sing: Lessons in Citizenship from Early Modern Lucca,” The Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 313-39
“The ‘Antiquarianization’ of Biblical Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653-57),” Journal of the History of Ideas, 63 (2001), 463-82
1997 “Les origines de la Bible Polyglotte de Paris: philologia sacra, Contre-Reforme et raison d'état,” XVIIe Siècle, 194 (1997), 57-66
1996 “Citizenship and Culture in Early Modern Europe,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 57 (1996), 725-42
1995 “Statecraft and Culture in Early Modern Europe,” Historical Journal, 38 (1995),
161-73
1994 “Calderón, Opera, and Baroque Aesthetics,” Cambridge Opera Journal, 6 (1994),
175-79
1993 “Freethinking and Freedom of Thought in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Historical Journal, 36 (1993), 599-617
Chapters in books
2022 “What Are These Stories For? Talking with Richard Tuttle,” Richard Tuttle: What is the Object? New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2022, 12-18
“Richard Tuttle and the Open,” Richard Tuttle: What is the Object? New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2022, 132-42
2022 “Introduction: Conserving Active Matter and the Historian,” Conserving Active Matter, eds. Peter N. Miller and Soon Kai Poh. New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2022, 17-50
2021 “What Kind of Knowledge is Museum Knowledge,” The Museum in the Cultural Sciences: Collecting, Displaying, and Interpreting Material Culture, ed. Miller. New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2022, 1-25
“Visions of Juxtaposition: Peiresc/ Bataille, Monuments/ Documents,” The Museum in the Cultural Sciences: Collecting, Displaying, and Interpreting Material Culture, ed. Miller. New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2020, 223-232
“Conclusion: Max Weber in the Museum,” The Museum in the Cultural Sciences: Collecting, Displaying, and Interpreting Material Culture, ed. Miller. New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2020, 279-306
2019 “What Price Innovation? The Cost of Printing the Paris Polyglot Bible,” Tributes to David A. Freedberg: Image and Insight, ed. Claudia Swan. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019, 27-39
2018 “Marx and Material Culture: Istvan Hont and the History of Scholarship,” Markets, Morals, Politics. Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought, eds. Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Sophus A. Reinert, Richard Whatmore. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 23-52
2017 “Peiresc in the Parisian Jewel House,” Knowledge and Discernment in the Early Modern Arts, eds. Sven Dupré, Christine Göttler. London-New York: Routledge, 2017, 213-35
“Coda: Not for Lumpers Only,” Antiquarianisms: Contact, Conflict, Comparison, eds. Benjamin Anderson, Felipe Rojas. Oxford and Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2017, 210-19
2016 “Goethe and the End of Antiquarianism,” For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton, eds. Ann Blair, Anja Goeing. Leiden: Brill, 2016, 897-916
2013 “Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1537). L’essor des études orientales,” and “Bible polyglotte,” Le gout de l’orient. Collections & collectionneurs de Provence, eds. Aurélie Bosc, Mireille Jacotin. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2013, 24-31, 38-99
“Peiresc, Rubens and Visual Culture, c.1620,” Art, Music and Spectacle in the Age of Rubens, eds. A. Knaap, M. Putnam. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013, 49-64
“The Germanisches Nationalmuseum and the Museums Debate in Later 19th Century Germany,” The challenge of the object: 33rd congress of the International Committee of the History of Art, Nuremberg, 15th - 20th July 2012, eds. Georg Ulrich Großmann and Petra Krutisch, 4 vols. Nuremberg: Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 2013, 1, 370-73
“A Tentative Morphology of European Antiquarianism, 1500-2000,” World Antiquarianism, eds. Alain Schnapp, Peter N. Miller, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Tim Murray. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2013, 67-87
“Mapping Peiresc’s Mediterranean: Geography and Astronomy, 1610-1636,” Observation in Early Modern Letters, 1500-1675: Epistolography and Epistemology in the Age of the Scientific Revolution, ed. Dirk van Miert. Oxford: Warburg Institute Colloquia, 2013, 135-60
“The Missing Link: ‘Antiquarianism,’ ‘Material Culture’ and ‘Cultural Science’ in the Work of G.F. Klemm,” Cultural Histories of the Material World, ed. Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, 263-81
“Introduction: The Culture of the Hand,” Cultural Histories of the Material World, ed. Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, 1-29
“Introduction: The Sea is the Land’s Edge Also,” The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography, ed. Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, 1-26.
“Two Men in a Boat: The Braudel-Goitein ‘Correspondence’ and the History of Thalassography,” The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography, ed. Miller. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2013, 27-59
“The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Peiresc,” ed. Miller. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2013, 251-76
“Forschungsinstitute Then and Now,” Intuition und Institution. Kursbuch Horst Bredekamp, eds., Carolin Behrmann, Stefan Trinks, Matthias Bruhn. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2013, 113-18
2012 “Peiresc and the Benedictines of Saint-Maur: Further Thoughts on the ‘Ethics of the Historian,’” Europäische Geschichtskulturen um 1700 zwischen Gelehrsamkeit, Politik und Konfession, eds. Thomas Wallnig, Ines Peper, Thomas Stockinger, Patrick Fiska. Berlin De Gruyter, 2012, 361-78
“Major Trends in European Antiquarianism, Petrarch to Winckelmann,” The Oxford History of Historical Writing vol.3, ed. Daniel Woolf. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 244-60
“Introduction: Antiquarianism in and Across Cultures” (with François Louis), Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800, eds. Louis and Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012, 1-24
“Writing Antiquarianism: Prolegomenon to a History,” Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800, eds. Louis and Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012, 27-57
“Comparing Antiquarianisms: A View from Europe,” Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800 , eds. Louis and Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012, 103-45
2009 “Seeking Margrieta,” Dutch New York Between East and West: the World of Margrieta van Varick, eds. Krohn and Miller. Yale University Press, 2009, 1-12.
“About an Inventory: A Conversation between Natalie Zemon Davis and Peter N. Miller,” Dutch New York Between East and West: the World of Margrieta van Varick, eds. Krohn and Miller. Yale University Press, 2009, 117-29
“Meeting Again (and Again): Reading Pinkhos Churgin’s Essay Seventy-Five Years Later,” Rav Chesed: Essays in Honor of Rabbi Dr. Haskel Lookstein, ed. Rafael Medoff (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2009), 61-73
“From Anjou to Algiers: Peiresc and the Lost History of the French Mediterranean,” Peiresc et l’Italie. Actes du colloque international Naples, le 23 et le 24 juin 2006, ed. Francsco Solinas (Paris: Alain Baudry et Cie, 2009), 279-91
2008 “Peiresc and the Study of Islamic Coins in the Early Seventeenth Century,” The Rebirth of Antiquity: Numismatics, Archaeology and Classical Studies in the Culture of the Renaissance, ed. Alan G. Stahl (= Princeton University Library Chronicle, Winter, 2008), 315-70
“Thinking with Thomas Browne: Sebald and the Nachleben of the Antiquarian, The World Proposed: Sir Thomas Browne Quatercentenary Essays, eds. Reid Barbour and Claire Preston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 311-28
”Hercules at the Crossroads in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Neo-Stoicism between Aristocratic and Commercial Society,” République des Lettres, Republique des Arts, ed. Colette Nativel (Geneva: Drosz, 2008), 167-92
“The Renaissance Republic of Letters and the Genesis of Enlightenment,” Europäische Bildungsströme. Die Viadrina in Kontext der europäischen Gelehrtenrepublik der frühen Neuzeit (1506-1811), ed. Reinhard Blänkner (Berlin: Schöneiche, 2008), 45-60
“Gassendi à 250 ans,”Gassendi et la Modernité, ed. Sylvie Taussig (Brussels: Brepols, 2008), 9-16
2007 “Piranesi and the Antiquarian Imagination,” Giovanni Battista Piranesi, eds. Sarah Lawrence and John Wilton-Ely (New York: Abrams, 2007), 123-38
”Introduction: Momigliano, Antiquarianism and Cultural History,” Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences, ed. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 3-65
“Momigliano, Benjamin and Antiquarianism After the Crisis of Historicism,” Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences, ed. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 334-78
2006 “Peiresc and the First Natural History of the Mediterranean” Sintflut und Gedächtnis, eds. Jan Assman and Martin Mulsow (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2006), 167-98
2005 “Peiresc in Africa: Arm-Chair Anthropology in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Les premiers siècles de la République européenne des Lettres (1368-1638), ed. Marianne Lion-Violet (Paris: Alain Baudry, 2005), 493-525
“Description Terminable and Interminable: Looking at the Past, Nature and Peoples in Peiresc’s Archive,” “Historia”: Empricism and Erudition in Early Modern Europe, eds. Gianna Pomata and Nancy Siraisi (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2005), 355-97
“Peiresc, the Levant and the Mediterranean,” The Republic of Letters and the Levant [= Intersections. Yearbook for Early Modern Studies 5], eds. Alastair Hamilton, Maurits H. van den Boogert, Bart Westerweel (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 103-22
“Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc and the Mediterranean World: Mechanics,” Les grands intermédiaires culturels de la République des Lettres. Études de réseaux de correspondances du XVIe au XVIIIe siècles, eds. Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, Hans Bots, Jens Häseler (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005), 103-26
2004 “Copts and Scholars: Kircher in Peiresc’s Republic of Letters,” Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything, ed. Paula Findlen (London: Routledge, 2004), 133-48
“The Mechanics of Christian-Jewish Intellectual Collaboration in Seventeenth-Century Provence: N.-C. Fabri de Peiresc and Salomon Azubi,” Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists, Jews, and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe, eds. Allison Coudert and Jeffrey Shoulson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 71-101
2001 “The Antiquary’s Art of Comparison: Peiresc and Abraxas,” Philologie und Erkenntnis. Beiträge zu Begriff und Problem frühneuzeitlicher ‘Philologie’, ed. Ralph Häfner (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001), 57-94
“A Philologist, a Traveller and an Antiquary Rediscover the Samaritans in Seventeenth-Century Paris, Rome and Aix: Jean Morin, Pietro della Valle and N.-C. Fabri de Peiresc,” Gelehrsamkeit als Praxis: Arbeitsweisen, Funktionen, Grenzbereiche, eds. Helmut Zedelmaier and Martin Mulsow (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2001), 123-46
“Making the Paris Polyglot Bible: Humanism and Orientalism in the early Seventeenth Century,” Die europäische Gelehrtenrepublik im Zeitalter des Konfessionalismus/ The European Republic of Letters in the Age of Confessionalism, ed. H. Jaumann (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001), 59-86
1997 “The ‘Man of Learning’ Defended: Seventeenth-Century Biographies of Scholars and an Early Modern Ideal of Excellence,” Representations of the Self from Renaissance to Romanticism, eds. P. Coleman, J. Kowalik, J. Lewis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 39-62
1997 “An Antiquary Between Philology and History: Peiresc and the Samaritans” in History and the Disciplines. Ed. Donald R. Kelley (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 1997), 163-84
Reviews and review articles
2015 Review of Jean Boutier, ed., Étienne Baluze, 1630-1718. Érudition et pouvoirs dans l’Europe classique in Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 70 (2015), 460-1
2014 Review of Carlo Ginzburg, Threads and Traces: True False Fictive in The Journal of Modern History, 86 (2014), 633-34
2011 Review of Nicholas Dew, Orientalism in Louis XIV’s France in British Journal for the History of Science, 44 (2011), 290-1
Review of Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers and David Hancock, Oceans of Wine, in West 86th, 18 (2011), 100-2
2007 Review of Eduard Mühle, Für Volk und deutschen Osten. Der Historiker Hermann Aubin und die deutsche Ostforschung, English Historical Review 122 (2007), 1064-1066
2002 Review of Antiquity and its Interpreters, eds. Alina Payne, et al., International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2002
Review of Margaret M. McGowan, The Vision of Rome in Late Renaissance France, The Journal of Modern History, 74 (2002), 853-4
2001 Review of Ingo Herklotz, Cassiano dal Pozzo und die Archäologie des 17. Jahrhunderts, Renaissance Quarterly, 54 (2001), 274-5
Review of Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past. Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 7 (2000/2001), 620-22
Review of Jean-Claude Bonnet, Nassance du Panthéon: Essai sur le culte des grands hommes, Journal of Modern History, 73 (2001), 417-9
Review of J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Vols 1 and 2, Albion 33 (2001), 116-9
1998 Review of Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time. English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century, International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 5 (1998), 312-15
Review of Elizabeth Cropper and Charles Dempsey, Nicolas Poussin. Friendship and the Love of Painting and Sheila McTighe, Nicolas Poussin's Landscape Allegories, Journal of Modern History, 70 (1998), 470-73
Review of Aristotelismo Politico e Ragion di Stato, ed. A. Enzo Baldini, Journal of Modern History, 70 (1998), 147-49
1996 “Citizenship and Culture in Early Modern Europe,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 57 (1996), 725-42
1995 “Statecraft and Culture in Early Modern Europe,” Historical Journal, 38 (1995), 161-73
1994 “Calderón, Opera, and Baroque Aesthetics,” Cambridge Opera Journal, 6 (1994), 175-79
Journalism
2016 “A New Republic of Letters,” The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, 8 April, 2016, B10-13.
“Towards an Intellectual History of Academic Administration,” in Perspectives on History. The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association (March 2016).
2015 “A Passionate Master” [=review of Marc Fumaroli, La République des Lettres], The New York Review of Books, 9 July 2015, 61-3.
“Is Design Thinking the New Liberal Arts?” The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, 3 April 2015, B6-B9.
“Word Science” [=review of James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities],The Times Literary Supplement, 27 March 2015, 26-27.
2014 “How Objects Speak,” The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, 15 August 2014, B6-B10.
2009 “The Human Factor” [=Review of Barry Cunliffe, Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 BC to AD 1000], The New Republic, 6 May 2009, 41-45.
“The Valmadonna Astonishment. Five hundred years of sacred history in one place,” The New Republic, 24 February 2009 http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=eafcfd28-b015-43d4-88cf-4958e76c6a30
2008 “The Morning or the Night” [=Review of Ingrid D. Rowland, Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/ Heretic], The New Republic, November 5, 2008, 34-39.
“The Big Picture” [=Review of Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages. Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800], The New Republic, July 22, 2008.
“’What We Know About Murdered Peoples’” [=Review of Samuel Kassow, Who Will Write our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Oyneg Shabes Archive], The New Republic, April 9, 2008, 34-39.
“To Wake the Dead” [=Review of David Macaulay, The Art of Drawing Architecture], The New Republic, January 30, 2008, 33-38.
2006 “Persecution and the Art of Healing” [=Review of Hugh Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician: The Various Life of Sir Theodore de Mayerne], The New Republic, November 13, 2006, 29-34.
“Peripheries” [=Review of Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds], The New Republic, April 24, 2006, 33-37.
2002 Review of Gershom Scholem. A Life in Letters 1914-1982, tr. and intro. Anthony David Skinner, The Forward, June 21, 2002, 14-15.
2001 Review of Azariah de’ Rossi, Light of the Eyes, tr. and intr. Joanna Weinberg, The Forward, September 28, 2001, 12.
“Past and Presents” [=Review of Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France], The New Republic, April 30, 2001, 38-44.
“A Preserving Place” [=Review of Lionel Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas], The New Republic, October 9, 2000, 46-53.
Front matter
2022 “Series Editor’s Preface,” Conserving Active Matter. Cultural Histories of the Material World 9. Bard Graduate Center, 2022.
“Series Editor’s Preface,” Object-Event-Performance. Art, Materiality, and Continuity Since the 1960s. Cultural Histories of the Material World 10. Bard Graduate Center, 2022.
2021 “Series Editor’s Preface,” The Museum in the Cultural Sciences: Collecting, Displaying and Interpreting Material Culture in the Twentieth Century. Cultural Histories of the Material World 8. Bard Graduate Center, 2021.
2020 “Series Editor’s Preface,” The Art of the Jewish Family. A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects. Cultural Histories of the Material World 7. Bard Graduate Center, 2020.
2016 “Series Editor’s Preface,” Ex Voto. Votive Giving Across Cultures. Cultural Histories of the Material World 6. Bard Graduate Center, 2016.
“Series Editor’s Preface,” In Space We Read Time. Cultural Histories of the Material World 7. Bard Graduate Center, 2016.
2015 “Series Editor’s Preface,” The Anthropology of Expeditions. Travel, Visualities, Afterlives. Cultural Histories of the Material World 5. Bard Graduate Center, 2015, ix-xi.
“Foreward,” The Technical Image. A History of Styles in Scientific Imagery, eds. Horst Bredekamp, Vera Dunkel, and Birgit Schneider. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015, viii-xi.
2013 “Series Editor’s Preface,” The Sea: Thalassography and Historiography. Cultural Histories of the Material World 2. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, ix-x.
“Series Editor’s Preface,” Cultural Histories of the Material World. Cultural Histories of the Material World 3. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, ix-x.
“Series Editor’s Preface,” Ways of Making and Knowing. The Material Culture of Empirical Knowledge. Cultural Histories of the Material World 4. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014, vi-viii.
2012 “Series Editor’s Preface,” Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800. Cultural Histories of the Material World 1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012, ix-x.
Exhibition projects
2022 Conserving Active Matter (with Ivan Gaskell, Aaron Glass, Jennifer Mass, Ittai Weinryb). Bard Graduate Center, Spring 2022
Richard Tuttle: What is the Object? (with Richard Tuttle). Bard Graduate Center, Spring 2022
2009–2010 Dutch New York Between East and West: the World of Margrieta van Varick (with Deborah L. Krohn). Bard Graduate Center, Fall 2009
Work in Progress
Heidegger for Historians: An edition and translation of Heidegger’s 1926 seminar on Droysen’s Historik with essays and commentary. With Jan-Eike Dunkhase
The History and Meaning of Research (under development)
Lectures and papers
2023 “Conservation as a Human Science.” The Gombrich Lectures. Warburg Institute, London, June 2023
2023 “Antiquarianism and Material Culture”; “Conservation as a Human Science”; “Heidegger’s 1926 Seminar on Droysen’s Historik”; “Research. And Artists Doing Research.” École Normale Superieure, Paris, May 2023
2020 “Gustav Friedrich Klemm and Cultural History,” École Normale Superieure, Paris, November 2020
2019 “The Golden Age of Humanities Research: Stereotypes and Surprises,” Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, June 2019
“A Brief History of Research,” Yeshiva University, April 2019
“Peiresc and Antiquarian Research: Some Implications,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Toronto, March 2019
2018 “The Quest for an Archaeological Hermeneutic,” Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, December 2018
"Museumswissenschaft as Kulturwissenschaft c. 1900: the debate about historical, decorative arts, and ethnography museums in the pages of Museumskunde" Zentral-Institiut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, November 2018
“Jinshixue and Antiquarianism: Rethinking the Shape of ‘Past-Studies’ in China and Europe,” two lecture series at Shanghai University and the Shanghai Museum, November 2018
“A Critical History of Technical Art History,” Northwestern University, November 2018
“Modern History and the Antiquarian: Objects and Research,” University of Southern Denmark, March 2018
2017 “Making Knowledge Out of Ruins,” Institute for the Formation of Knowledge, University of Chicago, November 2017
“How to Manage Research: Heller and the VIème Section,” Clemens Heller Centennial Conference, Berlin, May 2017
“Peiresc and Antiquity,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago 2017
“The Future of the Research Institute,” panel discussant, College Art Association Annual Meeting, February 2017
“The American Dream of the Mediterranean,” panel discussant, College Art Association Annual Meeting, February 2017
“Antiquarianism and Its Images,” Sawyer Seminar, USC, Los Angeles, February 2017
2016 “Winckelmann Between Peiresc and Goethe,” Johann Joachim Winckelmann: The Transalpine Fantasy of Modern Paganism, NYU, December 2016
“Archaeology: A Mediterranean Inquiry,” Mediterranean, Haifa, December 2016
“Provence-Goldconda: Seventeenth-Century French Jewelers at the Mughal Court and the Antiquarian Origins of Jewelry History,” 3rd European Congress of Jewelry History, Barcelona, November 2016
“What the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg can teach the Stanford d.school,” American Friends of the Warburg Institute, New York, October 2016
Response to Horst Bredekamp, “The Symbiosis of Picture and Nature. Thoughts on Neo-Mannerism,” Lionel Trilling Seminar, Columbia University, October 2016
“Time the Great Other,” Citizens of the Text Residency, Ghiora Aharoni Studios, New York, September 2016
“Peiresc’s Mediterranean World,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Boston, April 2016
“Peiresc, Microhistory and the Macroscale: Intellectual History as Global History,” Early Modern Seminar, Brown University, March 2016
2015 “The Mediteranean, Europe’s Enduring Frontier,” Colloque Objets frontière, University of Bordeaux, November 2015
“What Might a History of Antiquarianisms Look Like?” Antiquarianisms Across the Atlantic, Brown University, November 2015
"Marseille and Genoa, again: Thinking about the Seventeenth-Century Western Mediterranean,” Mediterranean Seminar, Columbia University, October 2015.
Roundtable on “History of Antiquarianism” (Chair), Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Berlin, March 2015
Roundtable on “Interdisciplinary Institutes and Humanities Research: Europe and the United States” (Chair), American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York, January 2015
2014 “The Material Culture of Cultural History: A Trip through Peiresc’s Mediterranean World,” Matters of the Word, Barnard College Annual Medieval and Renaissance Conference, December 2014
“Biography and Antiquarianism: Peiresc’s Archive, Peiresc’s Mediterranean,” BIOS Seminar, Stanford University, November 2014
“The Past and Future of the Research Library,” Global Forum of the National Library, Jerusalem, October 2014
“Jews and Christians in the Early Modern Period,” Commentator. Transformations of Early Modern Jewish Culture, University of Pennsylvania, April 2014
“Goitein as a Scholar of the Mediterranean,” Towards an Intellectual Biography of S.D. Goitein, Brandeis University, April 2014
“Peiresc and Marseille: A ‘Knowledge Community’ in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean,” INHA, Paris, March 2014
“Peiresc and the Merchants of Marseille: A Well-Documented Example of Scholarly Collaboration,” American Historical Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., January 2014
2013 “Antiquitates--historische Hilfswissenchaften--Culturgeschichte--Material Culture: A Genealogy,” Hiob Ludolf Lecture, Gotha Research Centre, University of Erfurt, October 2013
“Peiresc and the Merchants of Marseille: The Two Cultures in Action,” Renaissance Societies Series, University of Indiana, Bloomington, October 2013
“The Mediterranean from Marseille. Peiresc's Mediterranean Network,” Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence, July 2013
“La Méditerranée de Peiresc: ce que le XVIIe siècle peut enseigner au XXIe,” Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Paris, May 2013
“Activating/ Communicating/ Displaying an Archive,” Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, May 2013
“Le rôle des marchands Marseillais dans la République des lettres Levantine de Peiresc,” Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, March 2013
2012 “Peiresc in the Workshops of Paris: The Appeal of Practical Knowledge,” Workshop on the Portuguese Merchant-Banker Emmanuel Ximenes, Antwerp, November 2012
“The Germanisches Nationalmuseum and the Museums Debate in Later Nineteenth-Century German,” CIHA Quadrennial Meeting, Nürnberg, July 2012
"La Méditerranée de Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc," Seminar on “Information et savoirs. Production, circulation, usages”, University of Paris-I, February 2012
"Goitein et Braudel - une coopération ratée,” Mediterranean Seminar, École Normale Supereiure, Paris, February 2012
2011 “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Peiresc,” Historical Institute, University of Lausanne, November 2011
“Antiquarianism as Cultural History in the Seventeenth Century,” Art History Institute, University of Zurich, November 2011
2010 “Peiresc and the Mediterranean, Braudel and Goitein,” Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence, December 2010
“Peiresc and Selden Studying the Middle Ages at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century,” Oxford University, June 2010
“Peiresc’s Mediterranean Merchant Network,” Cultures of Knowledge Seminar, Oxford University, June 2010
“Morphologies of Antiquarinaism,” Traces-Collections-Ruins: Towards a Comparative History of Antiquarianism, Getty Research Institute, June 2010
“Peiresc’s Mediterranean Network,” Renaissance, Early Modern, and Western Mediterranean Graduate Conference, University of Chicago, May 2010
“The Germanisches Nationalmuseum and the Museums Debate in Later Nineteenth-Century Germany,” INHA-BGC Workshop, New York, May 2010
“The Mediterranean as a Problem for the History of Antiquarianism,” Early Modern Workshop, Princeton University, April 2010
“Peiresc and the Flemings: Rubens and Beyond,” Leventritt Symposium, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, April 2010
“Writing Antiquarianism,” Yale University, New Haven CT, March 2010
“Braudel and Goitein: The Story of a Failed Collaboration,” Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting, New Haven, CT, March 2010
“The Missing Link: ‘Antiquarianism,’ ‘Material Culture,’ and ‘Cultural Science’ in the Work of G.F. Klemm, Cultural Histories of the Material World, BGC, New York, January 2010
2009 “Braudel and Peiresc, Braudel and Goitein: the Past that Could Have Been,” NYU Symposium on 60 Years of the Mediterranean, New York, November, 2009
“The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Peiresc,” Thalassography & Historiography Symposium, New York, October 2009
“Writing the History of Antiquarianism Before Momigliano,” Cambridge Seminar in Intellectual History and Political Thought, Cambridge, January 2009
“The State of French Medieval History,” Commentator on a Panel at American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York, January 2009
2008 “The Antiquary and the Auxiliary Sciences: Peiresc, the Porcellet Family, and the History of Provence”, Columbia University Inter-Departmental Committee on Early Modern Studies-BGC Symposium, New York, April 2008
“Painting Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Rome and Paris,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Symposium on Poussin: Arcadian Landscapes, April 2008
“Ancient History and the Genealogist: Some Thoughts on the History of the History of History,” John Pocock and the History of History, The Johns Hopkins University, March 200
2007 “Publisher, Printer, Antiquarian, Spy: Peiresc and the Origines Murensis Monasterii (1618),” Republic of Letters Symposium, Stanford University, November 2007
“Peiresc and Numismatics (with special reference to Islamic numismatics),” Princeton Symposium on Numismatics in the Renaissance
“Mapping Peiresc’s Mediterranean: Geography and Astronomy, 1610-1636,” Observation in Early Modern Letters, 1500-1650, Warburg Institute, London, June 2007
2006 “Peiresc’s Ethiopia”, All Souls College, Oxford, January 2007. “From Anjou to Algiers: Peiresc and the Lost History of the French Mediterranean,” Peiresc e l’Italia, Naples, June 2006
“The Republic of Letters in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe,” Die Viadrina im Kontext der europäischen Gelehrtenrepublik in der frühen Neuzeit (1506-1811), Frankfurt (Oder), May 2006
“Morin on the Masora and the Beginning of Post-Biblical Jewish History,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, San Francisco, March 2006.
2005 “Gassendi at 250: A Perspective on the French Historical Revolution of the Twentieth Century,” Gassendi et la Modernité, Digne, October 2005
2004 “History of Religion Becomes Ethnology in the Early Seventeenth Century: Evidence from Peiresc’s Africa,” Princeton University, November 2004
“The Idea of Europe: Past, Present, Future,” Nexus Institut, Warsaw, October 2004.
“Hairdressing and History: Peiresc between Momigliano and Warburg,” Classics Department, Stanford University, January 2004
2003 “Peiresc on the Transformation of the Earth: Fossils and Volcanos Newly Explained,” Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, November 2003
“’Description’ in Peiresc’s Archaeological, Anthropological, Historical, Natural Historical, and Natural Philosophical Researches,” Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, Germany, June 200
2002 “Oriental Studies in the Seventeenth Century—a Beginning or an Ending?” Medieval and Renaissance Center Distinguished Lecture Series, New York University, October 2002
I. “Exploring Peiresc’s Orient.” II. “Peiresc and Ethiopia: Oriental Studies and the Origins of Orientalism,” Dipartimento di Ricerche Storico-Filosofiche e Pedagogiche, Università “La Sapienza,” Rome, May 2002
“The Mechanics of Peiresc’s Mediterranean Correspondence Network,” Forschungszentrum Europäische Aufklärung, Potsdam, Germany, March 2002.
“Baroque Humanism: Africa and Antiquity,” National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., January 2002.
2001 “Vu de Provence, le monde africain au sein de la République des Lettres,” Collège de France, December 2001.
I. “Sacred Philology and Polyglot Bibles.” II. “Antiquarianism and the Beginning of Oriental Studies in Europe.” III. “Scaliger, Bernays, and Momigliano: Antiquarianism, Wissenschaft des Judentums, and Cultural History.” Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, July 2001.
“Kircher, Peiresc and the Foundation of Coptic Studies. Or, the Quest for Barachias Nephi,” Stanford University, April 2001.
2000 “Peiresc's Collaboration with Rabbi Salomon Azubi: Astronomy and Antiquities in Provence c. 1630,” Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, May 2000.
“The ‘Antiquarianization’ of biblical scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653-57),” Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, April 2000.
1999 “Un quartier général de la République des Lettres en province? Peiresc, membre correspondant du Cabinet Dupuy,” Collège de France, Paris, March 1999.
“Constancy, Conversation and Friendship: The ‘civil life of private men’,” French Cultural Studies Seminar, Stanford University, February 1999.
1998 “Why Study the Past? Neo-stoicism and antiquarianism in the circle of Peiresc (1580-1637),” Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, May 1998.
“Tempus Edax Rerum: Time, History, and Antiquarianism,” Einstein Forum, Potsdam, Germany, March 1998.
1997 “Sarpi, Camden, Grotius and Peiresc: Reason of State and Ancient Constitutionalism in the respublica literaria,” Université francophone de l'été, Jonzac, France, September 1997.
“Taking Paganism Seriously: Early Seventeenth-Century Histories of Religion and Rational Theology,” Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Berlin, June 1997.
“Discovering the Samaritans in Seventeenth-Century Paris, Aix and Rome: Philologists, Antiquaries and Travellers Make the Sacred Historical,” U.C.L.A. Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, Los Angeles, June 1997.
“Antiquaries and Travellers Making the Sacred Historical: Peiresc, Morin and della Valle study the Samaritan Pentateuch,” Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, June 1997.
“History Painting, Opera Seria and an Early Modern Ideal of Excellence,” Wilder House Conference, Chicago, May 1997.
1996 “The Choice of Hercules, a Neostoic Hero in Action,” European Science Foundation, Lisbon, December 1996.
“Magical, Religious or Philosophical? Gnostic Gems and the History of Cultural History,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 1996.
“The Prolegomena to Walton's Polyglot and the Antiquarianization of Biblical Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century,” Internationalen Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, Vienna, June 1996.
“The Seventeenth-Century Antiquary as Cultural Historian,” U.C.L.A. Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, Los Angeles, March 1996.
“Polymaths, Polyglots, and the Beginnings of Oriental Studies in the Seventeenth Century,” University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, February 1996.
“Is England Part of Europe? Some Reflections on Early Modern Statecraft and Culture,” George Washington University, Washington, D.C., February 1996.
1995 “Biographies of Scholars and an Ideal of Individual Excellence in the Seventeenth Century,” East-West Seminar, Münster, July 1995.
“The editio princeps of the Samaritan Pentateuch in Context,” Renaissance Society of America, New York, April 1995.
“The Vita Peireskii and Biography in the Republic of Letters,” U.C.L.A. Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies, Los Angeles, March 1995.
1994 “Forms of Transmission,” Einstein Forum, Potsdam, Germany, July 1994. (Commentator).
“Tradition and Innovation in the Scientific Revolution,” University of Chicago, April 1994 (commentator).
1993 “Philology, Theology, and the Background to Peiresc's Egyptology,” Folger Library Seminar on History and the Disciplines, August 1993.
“Cicero and Early Modern Statecraft,” King's College Research Centre Seminar on the Reason of State, January 1993.
1992 “Freethinking and Freedom of Thought in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” American Historical Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., December 1992.
“Imperial Representation and the Limits of Sovereignty and Obligation, 1765-1775,”Anglo-American Historical Conference, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, July 1992.
“The Athenian Venture: Franco-British Competition and the Discourse of the Arts & Liberty,” North American Conference on British Studies, New York, April 1992.
1991 “Joseph Priestley: Between Locke and a Liberal Political Thought,” Le Moyne Forum on Religion and Literature, Syracuse N.Y., September 1991.
“Philosophy and the Song of the Soul: Poppea,” Venetian Seminar, Warburg Institute, University of London, May 1991.
“From Tacitus to Polybius: Classical Taste and British Empire in the Eighteenth Century,” Colloquium on British History, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, April 1991.
1990 “The Political Thought of Enlightenment England,” Seminar on Social and Political Thought, University of Cambridge, October 1990.
Conferences organized
2023 “Global Shapes of Knowledge: Towards a History of Research,” Institute for the Formation of Knowledge, University of Chicago, November 2023
2021 “Conservation Thinking in Japan and India,” Bard Graduate Center, May 2021
2019 “What is Research?” (co-organized with Lorraine Daston), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, June 2019
“Antiquarianism in the Islamic World,” Bard Graduate Center, May 2019.
2018 “Conserving Active Matter: History, Practice, Thought, Bard Graduate Center, November 2018
2015 “Extreme Conservation,” Bard Graduate Center, March 2015
2013 “Cultures of Conservation,” Bard Graduate Center, January 2013
“Was there Antiquarianism in the Islamic World?” Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, May 2013 (with Martin Mulsow, Islam Dayeh, Georges Khalil)
“The Early Modern Mediterranean in the Early Twenty-First Century: Methodology, History and Historiography,” Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence, July 2013 (with Hannah Baader)
2010 “Cultural Histories of the Material World,” Bard Graduate Center, New York, January 2010
“Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Seminar in the Material Cultures of the Ibero-American World,” Bard Graduate Center, May 2010
2009 “The Age of Antiquaries in Europe and China.” Bard Graduate Center, New York, March 2004. “Thalassography & Historiography.” Bard Graduate Center, New York, October 2009
2002 “Arnaldo Momigliano. Ancient History and the Antiquarian Fifty Years On.” Clark Library, U.C.L.A., June 2002
2001 Convener, Seminar in Cultural History, Bard Graduate Center 2001-
Subject of conferences
2013 “An Intellectual History of Material Culture 1600-1900,” Forschungszentrum Gotha/ Gotha Research Center, University of Erfurt, October 2013
“The Mediterranean from Marseille: Merchants, Mariners, Missionaries and a Scholar. A book manuscript by Peter N. Miller,” Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence, July 2013
Interviews
Thinking in the Past Tense. Eight Conversations, eds. Alexander Bevilacqua, Frederic Clark (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 141-65
Service to the field
Editor
2013– Series Editor, “Cultural Histories of the Material World” University of Michigan Press (2010-13), University of Chicago Press for Bard Graduate Center
Editorial boards
Lias
Mediterranea (published by Edipuglia, Bari)
Advisory boards
Networks in History, digital project at Stanford University
Global Forum of the National Library, Jerusalem
Institute on the Formation of Knowledge, University of Chicago
Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts, Northwestern University
Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence, Italy
Manuscript referee
University of Chicago Press, Princeton University Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Harvard University Press, Yale University Press, University of California Press, Ashgate, Journal of the History of Ideas, Jewish Quarterly Review, Journal of Modern History, American Historical Review
Teaching
Dissertation supervisor
In progress Shax Riegler, BGC, “Mario Praz: Collector and Antiquarian”
2015 Maude Bass-Krueger, BGC, “Jules Quicherat and the Beginnings of Costume History,” Ph.D 2015
Federun Scholz, BGC, “Costume History and Cultural History in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Ph.D 2015 (reader)
2013 Donna Bilak, BGC, “The Letters of John Allin, 1663-1674: a Cultural History”, PhD 2013
External dissertation committee
2005 Zur Shalev (Princeton University)
2010 John-Paul Ghobrial (Princeton University)
Courses taught
English Political Thought in the Age of Enlightenment
Classics of Social and Political Thought
Early Modern Europe 1400-1789
Europe in Renaissance and Reformation
The History of Cultural History
Early Modern Lives: Statesmen, Saints, and Sinners
Thinking About Things: Walter Benjamin as a ‘Historian’
Creating a Virtual Exhibition/ Digital Story: ‘Walter Benjamin’s New York’
The Historiography of the Cultural Sciences: The Bard Graduate Center in Context
The Origins of Commercial Society in Seventeenth-Century Holland and Eighteenth-Century Britain
Foundations of Material Culture 1400-2000
Backgrounds to European Culture: Renaissance to Enlightenment
The Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean
Orientalism: Meetings of East and West from the Crusades to Post-Colonialism
Antiquaries and Antiquarianism in Europe and China, 1000-1800 (with François Louis)
Antiquarianism: History, Theory, Future
In Focus: Warburg as Curator
The Antiquarian Foundations of Contemporary Design Thinking (with Michael Shanks, Stanford University)
Philosophy and Its Objects: Kant to Heidegger
Theories of Things: Archaeology
Sachlichkeit and Modernism in Germany and Austria, 1880-1950
What is Research?
What is the Object?
Administrative project implementation at Bard Graduate Center (2006–2023)
The Dean of Bard Graduate Center is the Chief Academic Officer, with final responsibility for a budget of approximately $10m (out of an institutional budget of $16m), a staff of 50, including 16 full-time faculty, 2 postdoctoral fellows and 6-8 annual visiting fellows, as well as 50 students taking classes at any one time. Direct reports include: Administrator of Academic Programs, Faculty Chair of Academic programs, Director of the Department of Research Collections, Director of Publishing, Director of DH/DX, Director of Public Humanities + Research. Responsible for reporting to the Director and thrice-yearly to the Board of Trustees.
Institutional advancement
Jointly oversaw planning of new academic building, working with architects, administrators and managing community feedback (2007–2009)
Oversaw redesign of institutional website working with major constituencies (Library, Faculty, Gallery, Administration) (2009)
Jointly oversaw redesign of institutional identity working with Director, Art Director and Senior Management (2009)
Jointly with senior management team led Strategic Planning Review (2012–2014)
Jointly with senior management team led Marketing Initiative (including selection of outside partner and production of new materials (2014)
Developed strategy and oversaw implementation of student recruitment initiative (2014)
Reorganized and developed new strategy for institutional programming for the non-academic public (2016)
8. Created Lab for Teen Scholars, a paid summer museum studies program for NYC public high school students with faculty-mentoring and writing supplement (2016)
9. Launched Fields of the Future Institute with the aim of expanding the sources, questions, practices, perspectives, practitioners, and audiences of interdisciplinary humanities scholarship. The Institute offers fellowships, runs our summer school in collaboration with the Alliance of Museums of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and supervises our community college and NYC public high school partnerships (2018)
10. Created Department of Research Collections to unite book collections, objects collections, digital asset collections and BGC Archive (2021)
Development and grants
Large grants
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, “Cultures of Conservation” (2012–2017) ($490,000; Principal Investigator); renewed 2017–2022 ($750,000; Principal Investigator)
Leon Levy Foundation, pilot program in Jewish Material Culture ($500,000, $150,000)
National Endowment for the Humanities awards to faculty members (three consecutive awards, approx. $150,000 for Summer Institute for College and University Teachers on “Material Culture of New York City”; one collaborative publication grant of $390,000 for a Franz Boas edition)
Small grants
Fund-raised for Trehan Research Fund in Islamic Artistic and Material Culture ($125,000)
Fund-raised to create the Cisneros Seminar on the Material Cultures of the Ibero-American World ($50,000)
David Berg Foundation for Jewish Material Culture ($60,000, $60,000)
Samuel H. Kress Foundation for workshop on “Writing Conservation” ($30,000); for summer school with HBCU Alliance of Museums “Research and Conservation” ($30,000); for summer school with HBCU Alliance of Museums “Researching Objects in the Digital Age” ($22,000)
MacArthur X-Grant ($10,000, $15,000)
Curriculum
Created new full-time academic lines in:
Islamic Art and Material Culture
Medieval European Artistic and Material Culture
Material Culture of New York City
Modern Design History
Museum Anthropology
Art and Material Culture of Africa and the African Diaspora
Focus Project
Created Mellon “Cultures of Conservation” curriculum
Created required writing program for all students, “Writing and Scholarly Imagination”
Oversaw creation of “Unsettling the Canon,” with participation from across the faculty
Collaborations
Local
Created NY Cultural Sciences Campus: collaborative exhibition program with New-York Historical Society; joint post-doctoral fellowship program with American Museum of Natural History; student internships at The Frick Collection; exhibition collaboration, teaching, internships at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Created a local area “Cultures of Conservation” collaboration with conservators at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frick Collection, American Museum of Natural History, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, and Yale Art Gallery
Created collaborative object-based teaching & exhibitions pilot program with La Guardia Community College, 2019
Created post-doctoral/ assistant curator position at Brooklyn Museum of Art in the Arts of Africa
International
Established student exchange programs with Royal College of Art/ V&A (London) and Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar of Humboldt University (Berlin), both beginning 2010
Organized telepresenced seminar with Max Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin in 2013
Organized summer teaching program and student exchange with École du Louvre, Paris beginning May 2015-
Organized international summer school with Rijksmuseum and University of Amsterdam on “Conservation and the Humanities: Objects as Evidence” July 2015; July 2018; July 2022
Organized a collaboration with the Excellence Cluster “Bild.Wissen.Gestaltung” based at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Conservation and Scientific Research Department of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam around the subject “Conserving Active Matter” within the overarching rubric of the “Cultures of Conservation” project
Digital projects
Oversaw creation of Digital Media Lab, including the hiring of a Director and planning of program, from 2009
Managed year-long review of digital projects with Ithaka S + R (2010–2011)
Launched digital faculty teaching collaborations with Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford, personally teaching the latter course (Fall 2014)
Oversaw planning and implementation of BGCTV: live streaming of research events with remote participation via Twitter (2013–20)
Initiated collaboration with Smithsonian Freer Gallery to build digital support for Sogdian exhibition
Oversaw creation of required digital tools curriculum for all incoming MA students
Gallery
Oversaw creation of Focus Gallery, faculty research space with student collaboration. Fifteen exhibitions have been produced since inception in 2010
Oversaw revamping of gallery education programs in 2016 and retain oversight of public programming
Created Public Humanities + Research to bridge research events and events for the public and also to cross over university and museum spaces of engagement
Research programs
Developed research programming from 0 events in 2000 to 80 in 2019, including evening seminars, lunchtime talks, symposia
Oversaw launch of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture in 2011
Created publication series and serve as General Editor of Cultural Histories of the Material World, first published by University of Michigan Press (2011-14) and now published by the BGC with distribution and occasional co-publishing with University of Chicago Press
Led successful membership application of BGC to ARIAH (Association of Research Institutes in Art History) in 2014 and CHCI (Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes) in 2015
Created new staff positions for Director of Publishing and Associate Director for Research Programs
Created paid research fellowship and non-stipendiary visiting fellowship programs
Envisioned and organized “Conserving Active Matter,” a collaborative research project with the Helmholtz Center at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Conservation and Scientific Research Department of the Rijksmuseum
Created new paid junior research fellowship for scholars historically under-represented in the areas of decorative arts, design history, and material culture (2020)
Reimagined programming as “Public Humanities + Research” in order to model new formats for the presentation of scholarly research and to create a meeting place for artists doing research and scholars working imaginatively