Ingenious Acts: The Nature of Invention in Early Modern Europe
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute Annual Conference
Friday 1st April
9-9:15: Opening Remarks (Peter Mancall, Alex Marr)
9:15-10:00: Session I
Chair: Peter Mancall (USC)
Paul Binski (Cambridge University): Gothic Invention
10-10:30: Coffee
10:30-12:00: Session II
Chair: Deborah Shuger (UCLA)
Bruce Smith (USC): The Congeniality of Shakespeare’s Genius
Timothy Chesters (Royal Holloway, University of London): Montaigne: The Lure of Invention
12-1:30 Lunch
1:30-3:00: Session III
Chair: Mary Terrall (UCLA)
Elly Truitt (Bryn Mawr College): History and Invention in the Middle Ages
Vera Keller (USC/University of Oregon): The Murder of Invention
3:00-3:15: Coffee
3:15-4:00: Session IV
Chair: Mordechai Feingold (Caltech)
Rhodri Lewis (University of Oxford): Literate Experience? Francis Bacon on Reading, Imagination and Discovery
Saturday 2nd April
9:30-10:15: Session V
?Chair: David Brafman (Getty Research Institute)
Michael Cole (Columbia University): What did Michelangelo Invent?
10:15-10:45: Coffee
10:45-12:15: Session VI Chair: Matthew Hunter (Caltech)
Sean Roberts (USC): Inventing Engraving in Vasari’s Florence
Frances Gage (Buffalo State College, SUNY): ‘Fantasia’ and the Habit of Invention in Seicento Rome
12:15-1:30: Lunch
1:30-3:00: Session VII
Chair: John Heilbron (Oxford University/Caltech)
Jessica Ratcliff (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): “Pretended Good and Profitable”: Vernacular Representations of Projectors and Technological Invention, c. 1630-70
Matthew L. Jones (Columbia University): Reinventing the (Stepped) Wheel: Invention and Nescience around Enlightenment Calculating Machines
3:00-3:15: Coffee
3:15-4:45: Session VIII
Chair: Daniela Bleichmar (USC)
Nicholas Wilding (Georgia State University): Obsolete Objects in the Scientific Imagination
Daniel Rosenberg (University of Oregon): Data Before the Fact
4:45-5:00 Concluding remarks
