What: Kathleen Kete will deliver her inaugural lecture as the Borden W. Painter,
Jr., ’58, H’95 Associate Professor of European History. Entitled “Becoming Visible: The Alps in the Age of the
French Revolution,” the lecture is free and open to the public.
When:
Tuesday, February 7 at 4:30 p.m.
Where: McCook
Auditorium on the Trinity campus, 300 Summit Street,
Hartford.
A reception will follow in Hamlin Hall.
Background:
Horace Bénédict de Saussure’s Voyages
dans les Alpes was published in a
series of volumes between 1779 and 1796, which were years of turmoil in Europe.
The Voyages combined geology, botany,
and meteorology with romanticism to form one of the most intriguing
page-turners of the revolutionary age.
Seeking to integrate human history
and the history of the earth, this Genevan aristocrat and patriot explored the
Alps and the other mountain ranges of Europe. His observations helped to
destroy the Cartesian theory of the earth and worked to establish an accurate
understanding of the formation of mountains, and thus the topography of the
globe, achievements celebrated in the history of
science.
Physical reality spoke accurately to
savants like Saussure through instruments of measurement—the hygrometer, the
electrometer, the thermometer, and the barometer, for example—that Saussure
devised or improved, and employed on his ascents of Mont Blanc and other major
peaks.
But the Voyages were exercises in social scientific perspective—of time and
of space, as well. How to describe the social reality of the Alpine lands that
he traversed? For this task, Saussure applied conceptual tools that this
lecture places on a par with his scientific apparatus in order to establish the
political importance of Saussure’s endeavor and of Alpine studies in the age of
Enlightenment and Revolution.
Through her teaching and research, Kete
has sought to broaden the field of history by including within its purview
previously neglected but rich subjects of study. Her first book, The Beast
in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth-Century Paris, helped create the
thriving interdisciplinary field of animal studies. This was followed by an
edited volume, A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Empire
(1800-1920), Vol. 5 of a series which was designated an Outstanding Academic
Title for 2008 by Choice Reviews. Her
latest book, Making Way for Genius: The Aspiring Self in France from the Old
Regime to the New, will be published this spring by the Yale University
Press. She is at work on a new project provisionally titled, “Becoming Visible:
A History of the Alps in the Age of the French Revolution.”
The
Borden W. Painter, Jr.’58, H’95 Endowed Professorship in European History was
established in 2004 by the Trustees of Trinity College, colleagues, Robert A.
Whitehead ’72, and former students in honor of Painter, Trinity’s 20th
president, in recognition of his extraordinary career and his service to the
College for more than 40 years.
For more information, please call the Trinity College
Advancement Office at 860-297-2010.