Credit, Thanks and Blame in the Works of Conrad Gessner

In this illustrated lecture, Harvard historian Ann Blair discusses the work of Zürich physician Conrad Gessner, who published prolifically in a wide range of areas and genres, from bibliography and philology to natural history and medicine. Blair analyzes Gessner's many prefaces and dedications to show how he used the medium of print to distribute credit, thanks, and blame in unusually public ways. He sought to enhance his ability to gather information and to elicit contributions of manuscripts, images, and help from scholars all over Europe.

About the Speaker

Ann Blair is Henry Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard University, where she specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe (16th–17th centuries). Her interests include the history of the book and of reading, the history of the disciplines and of scholarship, and the history of interactions between science and religion. Her publications include The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton UP, 1997), and Too Much To Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age (Yale UP, 2010).