Paola Bertucci

Assistant Professor of History of Science and Medicine

Paola Bertucci received her D.Phil. in History of Science from the University of Oxford. She is the author of a book on the Italian journey of the French experimental philosopher Jean Antoine Nollet (Viaggio nel paese delle meraviglie. Scienza e curiosità nell'Italia del Settecento, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2007) and co-editor of a volume on the history of the medical applications of electricity (Electric Bodies. Episodes in the history of medical electricity, Bologna: 2001). She has designed two new exhibitions for the permanent 18th-century collections of the Museum of the History of Science in Florence, Italy (opening in Fall 2009): “The Spectacle of Science” and “Domestic Science.”

Her current research focuses on natural catastrophes in the age of Enlightenment and on the material culture of science in eighteenth-century Italy.

Email: paola.bertucci@yale.edu

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:

“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.