Chapter 12: The Genevan Academy: Scrutinizing European Connections in the Time of Theodore Beza

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Goeing, Anja-Silvia. “Chapter 12: The Genevan Academy: Scrutinizing European Connections in the Time of Theodore Beza.” In Jon Balserak, ed.: A Companion to the Reformation in Geneva, 277-299. Leiden: Brill, 2021.

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Last updated on 04/10/2021

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Recent Publications

Goeing, Anja-Silvia. “Daniel Sennert’s Dissertations and the Furthering of Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century Medicine.” History of Universities 36, no. 1 (2023): 99-141. Publisher's Version Abstract

Goeing Sennert 2023

This chapter references Daniel Sennert’s dissertations to examine the development of new medical knowledge. It also covers new ways of assimilating and transmitting information in early modern Europe. Dissertations have only recently become a subject for investigation and are now treated as documents that help reveal learning practices in universities. The chapter explains how early modern medical science thrived on the lively exchange of information and materials among centres of European universities and academies. Overlooked developments in the organization and spread of medical knowledge of the early modern period is connected to the influence of university teaching and research on the (new) forms of knowledge. Dissertations are an important link in the chain of knowledge beyond the academy, and students’ undetermined part in the transmission of information.

Goeing, Anja-Silvia. “Conrad Gessner in Verse: Renaissance Natural History and the Swiss Reformation.” jhiblog.org (2022). Publisher's Version Abstract

Although routinely neglected by scholars, ephemeral poetry can teach us much about social networks and networks of knowledge in the early modern period. Sixteenth-century religious reform and the proliferation of scholarship through the new means of the printing press fostered many sorts of communication between scholars from different fields of knowledge. Here, ephemeral literature in particular reveals otherwise unknown connections between religious reform and the development of general knowledge in the sciences. Such was the case with the obituary poem written by the Genevan reformer Theodore Beza (1519–1605) about his former colleague, the physician and polymath Conrad Gessner (1516–1565). As a close study of this poem illustrates, the text is entangled in a complex network of exchange that revolved around the middlemen who helped memorialize Gessner and proved both cross-confessional and stretched across multiple disciplines of knowledge.

Blair, Ann, and Anja-Silvia Goeing. “Manuscripts as Pedagogical Tools in the Philosophy Teaching of Jean-Robert Chouet (1642-1731).” In Teaching Philosophy in Early Modern Europe. Text and Image, ed. by Susanna Berger and Daniel Garber (Archimedes, vol. 61), 165-203. Cham (Switzerland): Springer Nature, 2022. Publisher's Version Abstract

blair-goeing_2022.pdf

This chapter analyzes how the physics courses of Jean-Robert Chouet
(1642–1731) changed across the twenty years of his career as a professor of philosophy,
first at the Academy of Saumur (starting in 1664) then at the Academy of
Geneva (1669–86). We compare eight surviving student manuscripts, noting much
continuity but also some changes in organization, presentation, and content (in particular
a greater attention to the topics of place and extension important to
Cartesianism). Teaching by dictating a coursebook to students allowed the professor
to adjust his course at every iteration. The students also exercised individual choice
in the format, layout, and trappings of their manuscript coursebook, which could
include an alphabetical index or decorative elements. The most famous of Chouet’s
students whose coursebooks survive is Nicolas Fatio de Duillier (1664–1753), who
was later a friend of Newton’s. He studied philosophy with Chouet in 1678–80 and
his coursebook, which unfortunately does not include the section on physics, is
exceptionally beautifully kept and illustrated.

Keywords Student manuscripts · Physics courses · Academy of Geneva ·
Academy of Saumur · Jean-Robert Chouet · Nicolas Fatio de Duillier

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