Faculty & Staff
Anita Guerrini
Horning Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History
History of the Life Sciences and Medicine
Department of History
305B Milam Hall
Corvallis, OR 97331
Phone: (541) 737-1308
Fax: (541) 737-1257
Email: anita.guerrini@oregonstate.edu
Anita Guerrini is a historian of the life sciences and medicine, with strong interests in environmental history and the history of animals.
Background
- Guerrini graduated from Connecticut College (summa cum laude) in 1975 with a major in History and a minor in Music, and went on to earn an MA in Modern History from Oxford University. She studied with Richard S. Westfall at Indiana University where she received a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science in 1983. Before coming to Oregon State she taught at the University of Minnesota and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she held a joint appointment in History and Environmental Studies. She has taught a wide variety of courses in the history of science and medicine, in environmental history, and in early modern European history.
- Guerrini’s current research is in two main areas. She is writing a book, The Courtiers’ Anatomists, about animals, anatomy, and natural history in the Paris of Louis XIV. Her second area of research is on the role of history in ecological restoration. She is completing a study of the ecological history of a Santa Barbara wetland with Jenifer Dugan, a marine ecologist at UCSB; they have collaborated on articles and are putting together a multi-authored book. Their work has been supported by a Collaborative Programs grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Guerrini also continues to publish articles on various topics in early modern science, and is co-editing a book on ballads and broadsides in early modern Britain. Future projects include a book on monsters and anatomy in eighteenth-century London and further work on the relationship between food, animals, and the environment. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the French Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique, and other agencies. She has been a visiting fellow in Paris, Canberra, and Edinburgh as well as at the OSU Center for the Humanities.
Books
Recent Articles
- “Duverney’s Skeletons,” Isis 94:4 (December 2003), 577-603.
- “Anatomists and Entrepreneurs in Early Eighteenth-Century London,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 59:2 (April 2004), 219-39.
- “The Creativity of God and the Order of Nature: Anatomizing Monsters in the Early Eighteenth Century,” in Monsters and Philosophy, ed. Charles Wolfe (KCL Press, 2005), 153-68.
- “Alexander Monro primus and the Moral Theatre of Anatomy,” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 47:1(Spring 2006), 1-18.
- “The Eloquence of the Body: Anatomy and Rhetoric at the Jardin du Roi,” in Sustaining Literature: Essays in Commemoration of the Life and Work of Simon Varey, ed. Greg Clingham (Bucknell University Press, 2006), 271-87.
- “Natural History, Natural Philosophy, and Animals, 1600-1800,” in A Cultural History of Animals, vol. 4, 1600-1800, ed. Matthew Senior (Berg Publishers, 2007).
- “The Virtual Ménagerie: The Histoire des animaux Project,” Configurations 14:1-2 (2006, published 2008), 29-41.
- “Animal Experiments and Anti-vivisection Debates in the 1820s,” in Frankenstein’s Science, ed. Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall (Ashgate, 2008), 71-85.
- “Theatrical Anatomy: Duverney in Paris, 1670-1720,” Endeavour 33 (March 2009), 7-11.
- “The Trouble with Plovers,” in New Visions of Nature: Complexity and Authenticity, ed. Jozef Keulartz, Martin Drenthen, and James D. Proctor (Springer, 2009), 75-89.
- “Scots in London Medicine in the Early Eighteenth Century,” in Scots in London in the Eighteenth Century: Patronage, Culture and Identity, ed. Stana Nenadic (Associated University Presses, in press 2009).
- “Advertising Monstrosity: Broadsides and Human Exhibition in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in British Ballads and Broadsides, 1500-1800, ed. Patricia Fumerton and Anita Guerrini (Ashgate, in press 2009).
- “Informing Ecological Restoration in a Coastal Environment,” with Jenifer E. Dugan in Restoration and History, ed. Marcus Hall (Routledge, in press 2010).
