Areas of Interest

History of science, early modern cultural history, ritual, travel, social change, identity formation, alterity, cross-cultural contact, popular and court culture, state-building, religion, humanism, vernacular consciousness and literature, material & visual culture, sociology of science, history of anthropology and intellectual history.

Selected Publications

A Savage Mirror: Power, Identity and Knowledge in Early Modern France (Stanford University Press, 2006).

“Words, Deeds and a Womanly King,” French Historical Studies, Special issue: “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on French Literature and History” 28:3 (2005): 387-413.

"L'ordre du rituel et l'ordre des choses: l'entrée royale d'Henri II à Rouen (1550)," Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 56 (mars-avril, 2001): 479-505.

"Taking Stock at the End of the World: Rites of Distinction and Practices of Collecting in Early Modern Europe," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30 (1999): 395-424.

"Civilizing the Savage and Making a King: the Royal Entry Festival of Henri II" (Rouen, 1550)," The Sixteenth Century Journal 29 (1998): 467-496.

"The Looking Glass of Facts: Collecting, Rhetoric and Citing the Self in the Experimental Natural Philosophy of Robert Boyle," History of Science 35 (1997): 189-217.