History/Social Sciences: Early Modern-19th Century

I am a Professor of Modern European History at Moravian University where I have been working collaboratively across disciplines, currently on the Health Humanities program. At the GSA I have tried to remain true to this approach. Over the past ten years I worked with wonderful colleagues to launch two interdisciplinary networks: Emotion Studies Network and Body Studies Network. I served on the Program Committee and chaired the Seminars Committee for two years. Currently Ela Gezen and I coordinate a pilot program on undergraduate panels at the GSA.

I have published three books, Bildung der Triebe, Beyond the Gymnasium, and Spaces of Honor. My current book project, The Bodies of the Others, attempts to situate German bodies in a global context. These books and projects reflect my interests in the histories of education, the body, and emotions from the late seventeenth into the early twentieth centuries. They also reflect my work at the GSA.

If elected as Board Member, I would represent the earlier periods including the nineteenth century. I would also engage, in collaboration with other board members, in expanding the thematic and spatial scope and diversity of the GSA so that we can keep and grow the membership.

Denise Phillips is a historian of science who works on eighteenth and nineteenth-century German-speaking Europe. She is the author of Acolytes of Nature: Defining Natural Science in Germany, 1770-1850 (University of Chicago Press, 2012) and the co-editor, with Sharon Kingsland, of New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture (Springer, 2015). Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the DAAD, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, and the Fulbright Commission. She has been a GSA member since 2001 and has regularly presented work at the annual meetings. From her earliest involvement with the GSA, she has been interested in ensuring that the early modern period and the nineteenth century continue to be well represented in the Society. She has also watched with concern at the shrinking resources devoted to foreign language instruction across all educational levels in the United States, and would work to find ways that the GSA could cooperate with allied societies to raise awareness about the essential role that multilingualism plays in building a more tolerant and meaningfully interconnected world.