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Photo Credit: Mina Carson. Photograph of Karl Appuhn Teaching. At NYU, I teach classes in both the History and Italian Studies departments. I teach the History of Early Modern Europe, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, the Italian Renaissance, Environmental History, Animal History, Environmental Humanities, and Renaissance Literature.

Graduate Training Fields

I have directed exam fields in Early Modern Europe, Italian Renaissance Literature, the History of Science and Technology, Environmental History, and Agricultural History. I have supervised dissertations on early modern and modern science and technology, medieval and early modern Europe, and early modern and modern environmental history. I have worked with graduate students in the following fields:

Recent Undergraduate Courses

Hist-UA-66 Introduction to Science and Society (Lecture)

This course provides students with an introduction to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). This diverse field uses the tools of the humanities and social sciences to think critically about what, if anything, is particular about the way scientists produce knowledge and the role of scientific knowledge and technology in societies past and present. As a field, STS seeks to reveal the often invisible ways in which science and technology are intertwined with culture and politics. The course is organized around a series of case studies, each of which introduces students to key concepts and problems in STS, including how society comes to accept certain scientific facts or certain technologies rather than others; what drives changes in science and technology; how controversies are settled; and how scientists and bodies of scientific knowledge acquire and retain credibility. The course is required for completion of the Science and Society Minor, but it is aimed more generally at any student who wants to learn how to think more critically about the many interactions between science, technology and society.

Hist-UA-121 The Italian Renaissance (Lecture)

The culture and politics of Italy, from the demographic catastrophe of the Black Death in 1348 to the decline of the Italian states in the first half of the sixteenth century. During this period Italy was the Mediterranean crossroads for economic, political, and cultural exchange. The peninsula was also subject to repeated mass mortality events caused by epidemic disease and foreign invasions. The combination of crisis and cultural exchange led writers, artists, and a surprising number of common people search for answers to new questions about their place in the world and their relationship to each other and to God. We call that search the Renaissance. The course will focus on the Italian city-states. We will examine the new forms of political, artistic, religious, and scientific thought that we now associate with the Renaissance. Readings include literary works, diaries, traveler's accounts, visual art, and political and scientific writings.

Hist-UA-135 Science and Society in Early Modern Europe (Lecture)

This course familiarizes students with the history of western science prior to the eighteenth century. The course covers the history of western scientific thought, from its origins in the ancient near east to the Newtonian synthesis at the turn of the eighteenth century. Students will become familiar with basic questions and concepts in the history of science. Such questions include: What is science? How have western ideas about science changed since antiquity? How does science differ from other belief systems such as religion? What is the relationship between science and occult practices such as astrology and alchemy? What is the relationship between science and politics? How does science influence society and culture? Was there such a thing as the scientific revolution? If so, why did it happen in seventeenth century instead of some other historical moment? If not, can we offer an alternative explanation for the apparent explosion of scientific activity in this period?

Hist-UA-202 The History of Western Medicine (Lecture)

This course covers the history of western medicine and medical thought, from the antiquity to the present. The course will familiarize students with basic questions and concepts in the history of medicine, models for understanding the historical development of medical thought; the varied historical relationships between medicine and other healing practices such as religion, alchemy, and homeopathy; the influence of culture and politics on the development of medical thought; and the role that the emergence of a medical profession characterized by formal training and informed by a scientific viewpoint played in the development of western societies. By the conclusion of the course every student should be able to give a coherent account of how our current understanding of medicine emerged as part of a dynamic historical process rather than a simple succession of discoveries and improvements.

Core-UA-400 Texts and Ideas: Nature (Lecture)

This course examines some of the ways in which the idea of “nature” has been articulated in western culture, from its origins in early creation myths to its current incarnation as a focus of ethical and policy debates. The first half of the course focuses on texts from the “Judeo-Christian” and Hellenic traditions and four key seventeenth and eighteenth-century texts. The second half of the course investigates how many of these older ideas were appropriated, reconsidered, and occasionally rejected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our main concern will be to carefully analyze a set of ethical and historical problems arising out of conflicting ideas about the proper relationship between human beings—both as individuals and social groups—and nature.

Hist-UA-75 Pandemics on Film (Lecture)

Pandemics have been our constant companion ever since the first humans formed settled agricultural societies about 12,000 years ago. And Epidemic disease has been used to represent a wide range of cultural anxieties for nearly as long. For example, in the oldest surviving written text, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero Enkidu dies of a mysterious disease sent by the Gods as a punishment for human hubris. This course will examine the ways that filmmakers across several genres (documentary, realism, science fiction, and horror) have employed pandemics as a way of exploring the relationship between disease and society. Each week you will watch a film and read an accompanying short piece that will help you contextualize and engage with the movies.

Hist-UA-203 The Trial of Galileo (Seminar)

This course explores one of the most famous individuals and infamous episodes in the history of science, the 1633 trial of the mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei on charges of heresy. Galileo presents particular problems for historians, because from the very moment Catholic Church published the verdict in his second trial people began to argue not only about what had "really happened," but about what it "really meant." In the nearly 400 years since, disagreements over the facts and meaning of the episode and about Galileo's place in the history of science have only multiplied. In the eighteenth century, Protestant nations used the trial as proof of Catholic backwardness and perfidy. In the second half of the nineteenth century the architects of Italian unification chose Galileo as one of the official heroes of the new nation, a symbol of Italian greatness in the sciences. Still today Galileo looms large. The Galileo affair is frequently invoked as an example of the courageous defense of science against superstition and blind obedience to religious dogma. Many people believe he was executed or died in prison (he was not and did not), or that his dying words were "eppur si muove," "yet it moves" (they were not). A simple web search will turn up a bewildering variety of contradictory accounts about "what really happened" and what it "really meant." It is precisely the ambiguities and complexities of the Galileo affair that continue to attract the attention of scholars and the public alike.

Hist-UA-253 Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Italy (Seminar)

In 1348 approximately a third to one half of all Europeans died from a mysterious illness they called the Black Death. For the next 400 years governments, physicians, and individuals grappled with repeated outbreaks of epidemic disease. Plague disrupted normal life, brought economies to a standstill, provoked political crises and even border disputes. It remained a leading, if irregular, cause of mortality in Renaissance Italy. Italian states and medical thinkers responded to the problem of disease with both practical and theoretical approaches. New public health institutions and legislation became a staple of Italian statecraft in the period. For their part, medical authorities offered new and often conflicting theories that helped underpin the new institutions. This seminar explores the history of plague in Italy beginning in 1348 and ending in the late eighteenth century. We will explore the ways in which Italians coped with plague as well as the social, economic, and political consequences of various epidemic and endemic diseases in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period. These include not only the Black Death, but venereal diseases and zoonotic and epizootic diseases as well. We will read both primary and secondary sources.

Recent Graduate Courses

Hist-GA-1050 Environmental History

The principal goal of the course is to provide students with a working knowledge of the historiography of the field of environmental history. The course is organized around some of the major themes in the literature. Since complete coverage would be impossible, the course strives to provide a mix of classic texts and more recent scholarship in an effort to familiarize students with the methods, objectives, and research techniques employed by environmental historians.

Hist-GA-1202 The History of Science and Technology

The principal goal of the course is to provide students with an introduction to the historiography of the fields of history of science and technology. The course is organized around some major themes and conceptual problems in the literature. Since complete coverage would be impossible, the course aims to provide a broad overview of both foundational and current debates. To that end, we will read a mix of classic texts and more recent scholarship. By the end of the semester, students should be familiar with a range of methods, objectives, and research techniques employed by historians of science and technology, as was as be prepared to apply these methods and insights to their own work.

Hist-GA-1151 Now and Then (with Guy Ortolano)

This course compares the approaches through which early modern and modern historians address related concerns. Each week pairs exemplary works of early modern and modern historiography that speak to conceptually related issues. Although “Now and Then” satisfies both the early modern and modern European “Literature of the Field” requirements, the course is not a traditional “Lit of the Field.” Students who have already fulfilled that requirement, or who work on other times and places, stand to benefit from discussions of problems and approaches that transcend periodizations.

Ital-GA-1560 The Politics of History in Renaissance Italy

Scholars of the Italian Renaissance have long argued that one of the signal developments of the late Renaissance period was the emergence of modern forms of historical writing and thinking. This historiographical tradition argues that a small group of (mostly Florentine) thinkers broke away from the medieval chronicle tradition as well as the imitative constraints of humanism to invent a new way of thinking about the past and its relationship to the present. In so doing, the argument goes, these thinkers not only established new norms of historical thinking, but also mobilized history as a tool for making prescriptive judgements in the realm of politics. This course will evaluate these claims through close readings of three of the most important authors in this new tradition—Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Botero. In the first part of the course we will look at some key texts in the Chronicle and Humanist traditions. In the second part we will look at Machiavelli and Guicciardini's efforts to invent a new way of writing about the past (both recent and distant) and in the last part of the class we will see how they, joined by Botero, translated history into prescriptive political theory.

Ital-GA-2589 Literature and Science in Renaissance Italy

The boundaries between literature and science in Renaissance Italy were famously porous. Renaissance writers reflected on the origins of disease, and linked it to various phenomena including moral virtue, geographical place, astrological conjuncture, and even the discovery of the New World. And figures we associate with mathematics and astronomy, like Galileo and Giordano Bruno, employed literary form in interesting ways. In this course we will explore a number of key late Renaissance literary texts, many of them written by physicians and natural philosophers. Texts will include Marsilio Ficino's Three Books on Life, Girolamo Fracastoro's epic poem Syphilis, Girolamo Cardano's Book of my Life, and Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius.