Rebecca Messbarger

Candidate statement

Rebecca Messbarger is Professor of Italian, Affiliate Professor of History, Art History, Performing Arts, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and founding Director of Medical Humanities at Washington University, where she also served as Associate Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the Medical School. She founded and co-convenes the Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Salon at Washington University, now in its 23rd year. She is author of The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini (Chicago, 2010), recently translated into German and Italian and the inspiration for a new film of the same title. She co-edited two volumes, The Contest for Knowledge, with Paula Findlen (Chicago, 2005) and Benedict XIV: Art, Science and Spirituality, with Christopher M.S. Johns and Phil Gavitt (Toronto, 2016). She is recipient of the Catharine Macaulay, Clifford, and Percy Adams Prizes, and her research has been supported by the NEH, Mellon Foundation, and American Philosophical Society. A recent Rome Prize recipient, she is currently a fellow at the American Academy in Rome conducting research for a book on the Italian Enlightenment. She has been a member of ASECS for more than 20 years, has served on the editorial board of SECC, the Executive Board as at-large member (2011-14), and various committees. She has prized working with members of the Italian Caucus of ASECS to attract Italian scholars and promote eighteenth-century Italian studies. She is committed to building on the Society’s strengths while invigorating the presence of underrepresented disciplines, attracting a diverse, international membership of scholars at every stage, and promoting multidisciplinary, transmedia approaches to the eighteenth-century.