Rate My Professor Ann Blair

Blair specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe, with emphasis on France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the history of the book and reading, scholarly information management, note-taking practices, reference works, and the role of amanuenses. Her major publications include The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton University Press, 1997); Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (Yale University Press, 2010); and L'Entour du texte: la publication du livre savant à la Renaissance (Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2021). She has co-edited volumes such as Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe (with Richard Yeo, 2010), Physico-theology: Religion and Science in Europe 1650-1750 (with Kaspar von Greyerz, 2019), and Information: A Historical Companion (with Paul Duguid, Anthony Grafton, and Anja-Silvia Goeing, 2021). Blair has received numerous honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship (2002), Guggenheim Fellowship (2014), Radcliffe Institute Fellowship (2014-15), Harvard College Professorship (2009), Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award (2014), election to the American Philosophical Society (2009), and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Mellon Foundation. She has delivered prestigious lectures, including the Rosenbach Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania (2014), Panizzi Lectures at the British Library (2019), and Lyell Lectures at Oxford (2023), and organized conferences on book history and note-taking at the Radcliffe Institute. Blair serves on editorial boards for journals such as the Journal of Modern History and Erudition and the Republic of Letters.