Anita Guerrini

Scholar (Humanities and History), US

Anita Guerrini is Horning Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History at Oregon State University.  Her degrees are from Connecticut College, Oxford University, and Indiana University.  Trained as a historian of science, her work has explored early modern intersections among human anatomy, experimentation, and animals.  She has also written on the history of food and diet, as well as on the role of history in present-day ecological restoration.  Her most recent book is The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris (Chicago, 2015).

Learn more: www.anitaguerrini.com  

The Dauphiné Giant: Fossils, Mythology, and National Identity in Early Modern France

In 1613, a set of giant bones were found in the Dauphiné.  Identified as those of an ancient Gaulish king, Teutobochus, the bones launched a five-year pamphlet war, and over two hundred years of speculation amidst the new sciences of archaeology and paleontology.  The Dauphiné giant appeared in an era when ancient certainties about science, history, and time were crumbling, and provides an entryway to exploration of history, myth, and national identity at a critical time in the history of France, when the idea of a French nation was coming into being amid religious and political turmoil.

Anita Guerrini was in residence at the Camargo Foundation in 2019, as part of the Core Program.