Una’s Lectures

Anthony Grafton, Una’s Lecturer 1999-2000

“Conversion and Astrology: Theory, Experience, and Cosmology” and
“Conversion and Autobiography: Pattern, Experience, and Salvation”
November 1999

Occasional Paper || In Anthony Grafton’s wide-ranging body of work, projects that analyze the history and development of scholarly practices figure prominently. The Footnote: A Curious History (1997) provides a representative example. “Most students of footnotes, in recent times,” writes Grafton, “have come to bury, not to praise them ... The sterile pedantry of scholars makes a perpetually attractive theme, and the criticism is usually justified.” And yet Grafton comes to the defense of the “lowly footnote:” his book offers a critical account of the footnote’s origins, which celebrates the richness and complexity of this discursive tradition even as it also casts a critical eye on the scholarly disciplines that have determined the footnote’s status. And though he is a scholar’s scholar, Grafton’s book has earned high praise in circles outside of the academy. A reviewer in the Wall Street Journal describes Grafton—with evident astonishment—as someone who is both “a deeply learned scholar” and “a sprightly writer capable of communicating his enthusiasm to anyone willing to listen.” The Washington Times describes The Footnote as “a delightful gem of a book that will appeal to many tastes.” Widely reviewed in the United States, the book was subsequently translated into French, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, and Italian.

Currently the Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University, Grafton studied classics, history, and history of science at the University of Chicago and University College, London. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1975. His many honors include the Behrman Prize for Achievement in the Humanities at Princeton; a visiting professorship at the École Normale Supèrieure, Paris; and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He has delivered the J.H. Gray Lectures at Cambridge University; the E.A. Lowe Lectures in Paleography and Kindred Subjects at Oxford University; the Rothschild Lecture in the History of Science at Harvard University; and the Meyer Schapiro Lectures at Columbia University. He served as Warburg Professor in Hamburg, Germany in 1998-1999.