Paola Bertucci
Assistant Professor of History of Science and Medicine
(Leave of absence, Academic Year 2010-11)
Office: HGS 300-G
Phone: (203) 432-1397
Email: paola.bertucci@yale.edu
Links: Curriculum Vitae
Paola Bertucci received her D.Phil. in History of Science from the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on various aspects of science and medicine in the age of Enlightenment: spectacle and secrecy; travel and industrial espionage; the human body in experimental practice; collections of scientific instruments and the material culture of science; meteorology and natural catastrophes. She has published on 18th-century electricity and medical electricity and has organized several museum exhibitions, including two new permanent installations from the 18th-century collections of the new Galileo Museum (formerly Museum of the History of Science) in Florence, Italy: The Spectacle of Science and Science in the Household.
She is currently writing a book on science, spectacle and secrecy in Enlightenment France.
Selected publications
Books:
Viaggio nel paese delle meraviglie. Scienza e curiosità nell’Italia del Settecento [A Journey in Wonderland. Science and Curiosity in Eighteenth-Century Italy]. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2007
Electric Bodies. Episodes in the History of Medical Electricity (co-edited with Giuliano Pancaldi), Bologna: CIS, University of Bologna, 2001
Articles or book chapters:
"Enlightening Towers: Public Opinion, Local Authorities and the Reformation of Meterology in Eighteenth Century Italy," in Playing with Fire: The Cultural History of the Lightning Rod, P. Heering, O. Hochadel, D. Rhees (eds.), Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 2009.
“Domestic Spectacles: electrical demonstrations between business and conversation”, in Christine Blondel, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (eds.), Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008
“Therapeutic attractions: early applications of electricity to the art of healing” in H.A. Whitaker, C.U.M. Smith, S. Finger (eds.) Brain, Mind and Medicine: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Neuroscience, Boton: Springer, pp. 271-84, 2007
“Sparks in the dark: the attraction of electricity in the eighteenth century”, Endeavour, 31 (2007), 88-93
“Revealing Sparks. John Wesley and the religious utility of electrical healing”, British Journal for the History of Science, 39 (2006), 341-62
“Back from Wonderland: Jean Antoine Nollet’s Italian Tour (1749)”, in L. Evans, A. Marr (eds.), Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, Aldeshot: Ashgate, pp. 193-211, 2006
“Public utility and spectacular display: the Physics Cabinet of the Royal Museum in Florence”, Nuncius, 21 (2006), 323-36
“Sparking Controversy: Jean Antoine Nollet and Medical Electricity South of the Alps”, Nuncius, 20 (2005), 153-187
“Promethean Sparks. Electricity and the order of nature in the eighteenth century”, in S. Zielinski, S. Wagnermaier (eds.), Variantology1. Diverse Historical Approaches Towards an Archaeology of Media, Technology and the Arts, Cologne: Walther König, 2005
“A philosophical business: Edward Nairne and the Patent Medical Electrical Machine (1782)”, History of Technology, 23 (2001), 41-58
“The electrical body of knowledge: medical electricity and experimental philosophy in the mid-eighteenth century”, in P. Bertucci, G. Pancaldi (eds.), Electric Bodies. Episodes in the history of medical electricity, Bologna: CIS, Dipartimento di Filosofia, 2001
“Medical and animal electricity in the work of Tiberius Cavallo”, in Marco Bresadola e Giuliano Pancaldi (eds.), Luigi Galvani International Workshop. Proceedings, Bologna Studies in the History of science, 7 (1999), 147-166.
