Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

John Tresch

Visiting Scholar

Ph.D., Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania

Residence: January 1 - June 30, 2012


Profile

John Tresch earned his Ph.D. in the history of science at Cambridge University in 2003. He is currently holding a position as associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the cultural history of science and technology in Europe, especially France, and the USA from 1750 to the present. Particular interests include intersections of science, technology, philosophy and the arts; media studies; the rhetoric and technologies of science in romanticism, modernism and beyond; ritual, religion and experience in technoscience; and the changing shape and effects of the human sciences. He has held fellowships at Columbia, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Selected publications

John Tresch. The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon. University of Chicago Press, March 2012.

John Tresch and Mara Mills (Editor/s). Introduction: A/V; The Prophet and the Pendulum: Sensational Science and Audiovisual Phantasmagoria around 1848. Spring 2011.

John Tresch. "“Gilgamesh to Gaga.” On fame machines. " Lapham’s Quarterly IV (1 2011)

John Tresch. "Experimental Ethics and the Science of the Meditating Brain." In: Neurocultures: Glimpses into an Expanding Universe, eds.: Francisco Ortega and Fernando Vidal. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011.