John Tresch

Associate Professor

2003 Ph.D., Cambridge University, History and Philosophy of Science

1996-2000 Ecole Normale Supérieure, concours B'/L

1997 D.E.A. de Sciences Sociales, ENS/EHESS

1996 M.Phil, Cambridge University, HPS

1995 B.A., University of Chicago, Anthropology

Contact Information

Office Address:

326 Claudia Cohen Hall

Email Address:

jtresch@sas.upenn.edu

Web Site:

Publications, some available for download

Office Hours:

By appt.

Teaching Fields:

History of science, history of technology

Research Interests:

His research focuses on the cultural history of science and technology in Europe, especially France, and the USA from 1750 to the present. Particular interests include intersections of science, technology, philosophy and the arts; media studies; the rhetoric and technologies of science in romanticism, modernism and beyond; ritual, religion and experience in technoscience; and the changing shape and effects of the human sciences. He has held fellowships at Columbia, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Selected Publications:

The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon, University of Chicago Press (in press, March 2012).

2011. Grey Room Quarterly (43) special issue, "Audio/Visual," on media studies and history of science. Guest editor, with Mara Mills. "Introduction: A/V" (pp. 6-15, with Mara Mills), and "The Prophet and the Pendulum: Popular Science and Audiovisual Phantasmagoria around 1848" (pp. 16-41).

2011. “Gilgamesh to Gaga.” On fame machines. Lapham’s Quarterly, commissioned essay, issue on “Celebrity,” Vol IV, No.1., pp.185-192.

2011. "Experimental Ethics and the Science of the Meditating Brain." In Francisco Ortega and Fernando Vidal, eds., Neurocultures: Glimpses into an Expanding Universe. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 45-64. (PDF below)

2007. “Estrangement of Vision: Edgar Allan Poe’s Optics”. In Fiorenti, Erna., ed. Observing Nature- Representing Experience, The Osmotic Dynamics of Romanticism, 1800-1850. Berlin: Reimer Verlag, pp. 126-157. (PDF below)

2005. “Cosmogram.” Interview with Jean-Christophe Royoux, in Melik Ohanian and Jean-Christophe Royoux, eds. Cosmograms. Lukas and Sternberg. New York. pp. 67-76. (PDF below)

Book Images:

Observing Nature - Representing Experience

Attachment	Size
HeavensOnEarthHumboldt.pdf	3.11 MB
Poe's optics.pdf	209.54 KB
TreschCosmogramInRoyouxSm.pdf	1.17 MB
neurocultures.mindandlife.jt_.pdf	3.05 MB