Research

I study Renaissance Germany, particularly transformations in knowledge, power, and identity during this era of intellectual discovery and rediscovery, political retrenchment, and religious challenge. I am interested in exploring how knowledge (broadly understood) is generated, circulated, and used to impel action within specific historical contexts and under changing configurations of power and authority.

My first book, The German Discovery of the World, examines the German responses to the overseas expansion of Europe, arguing that German participants and observers successfully made sense of the newly discovered lands and peoples on the basis of their existing expertise and interests. In putting the work of these mapmakers, travelers, publishers, moralists, merchants, and naturalists into the original context of its creation, I reassess the relationship between Renaissance knowledge and the European encounter with the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

My current research on “The German Nation of the Holy Roman Empire, 1440-1556,” examines how the intersections between national sentiment and imperial claims changed under the influence of humanism, imperial political reform, and the splintering of religious identity in the Reformation. I hope to expand our understanding of Central European political culture and identity formation and to offer a different perspective on the meanings of nation and empire in early modern Europe.

Publications

Books

The German Discovery of the World: Renaissance Encounters with the Strange and Marvelous. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2008)

Articles

"Renaissance German Cosmographers and the Naming of America," Past and Present 191:1 (May 2006), 3-43

"Buying Stories: Ancient Tales, Renaissance Travelers, and the Market for the Marvelous," Journal of Early Modern History, 11:6 (November 2007), 405-446

"Creating a Usable Past: Vernacular Roman Histories in Renaissance Germany," The Sixteenth Century Journal, 40:4 (Winter 2009), 1069-90

Awards

Kluge Fellowship, Library of Congress, Spring 2009

Faculty Research Grant, Washington University, Summer 2005

Fellow of the Dr. Gunther Findel Foundation, Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Summer 1999

Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, Spring 1998

Dissertation Research Fellowship, DAAD, 1996-1997

Short-Term Fellowship, Newberry Library, Summer 1996

Courses

Western Civilization I

Freshman Seminar: The City in Early Modern Europe

Text and Tradition: Puzzles and Revolutions (Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities)

Europe in the Age of Reformation

Renaissance Europe

Women in Early Modern Europe

Two Renaissance Cities (taught through the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities)

Narratives of Discovery

Money and Morals in the Age of Merchant Capital

Mapping the Early Modern World (Writing Intensive Seminar)

Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean World, 1100-1650 (co-taught with Professor Ahmet Karamustafa)

Advanced Seminar: Encounter and Empire: European Colonialism 1500-1800