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Joyce E. Chaplin

James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History

Robinson Hall, Room 122, 35 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Joyce E. Chaplin
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  • Joyce E. Chaplin (PhD and MA Johns Hopkins, BA Northwestern) is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History. A former Fulbright Scholar, she has taught at five different universities on two continents and an island, and in a maritime studies program on the Atlantic Ocean. She is most interested in topics where humans and nature meet, including subjects in early American history, intellectual history, the history of science, and environmental history. An award-winning author, her major works include An Anxious Pursuit:  Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815 (1993), Subject Matter:  Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (2001), and The First Scientific American:  Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius (2006). She is also the editor of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography:  A Norton Critical Edition (2012). Her reviews and essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, and the Wall Street Journal. Professor Chaplin's most recent book is the first history of around-the-world travel, Round about the Earth:  Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit (2012). 

Twitter

  • JoyceChaplin1
    JoyceChaplin1 History’s first international #balloon flight was done to celebrate peace: on January 7, 1785, French aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard and Boston-born British subject John Jeffries crossed the English Channel to mark the restoration of amity after the American War for Independence. t.co/coXFFCsMnw
    9 hours 47 min ago.
  • JoyceChaplin1
    JoyceChaplin1 Warm thanks to the #Anthropocene Seminar in the #History and Philosophy of #Science Department at Cambridge Uni! Fantastic, helpful discussion today of my Franklin stove project—with special attention to the dark and dirty business of adapting to coal.
    1 day 8 hours ago.
  • JoyceChaplin1
    JoyceChaplin1 I take my victories where I can find them and am beyond relieved that my senior thesis supervisor (!), before whose judgment I still cower, read chapter six of my Franklin stove book manuscript and liked it.
    1 week 4 days ago.
  • JoyceChaplin1
    JoyceChaplin1 “Evil truly can be banal, if niceness has become a characteristic affect in a nation built on Indian removal, enslavement, genocide and violent invasion of the lands of others.” t.co/KWxtm3LtgN
    2 weeks 1 day ago.
  • DivestHarvard
    DivestHarvard BREAKING: One year after @Harvard’s divestment pledge, FFDH Alumni calls on the university to go further. A new report says H can embody true climate leadership only if it bans fossil fuel-funded research & enforces public disclosure of funding sources. 🧵 t.co/TjBvIb3GXg t.co/Fxhaqc2ohE
    2 weeks 2 days ago.
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Recent Publications

  • Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit
  • “Planetary Power?: The United States and the History of around-the-World Travel,”
  • “Earthsickness: Circumnavigation and the Terrestrial Human Body, 1520-1800,”
  • "How Size Matters: The Question of Scale in History"
  • "The Pacific before Empire"
  • "Ogres and Omnivores: Early American Historians and Climate History"
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