University of Southern California
USC College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences   USC
USC College Department of Art History
Faculty

Daniela Bleichmar

Assistant Professor of Art History and History

Contact Information
E-mail: bleichma@usc.edu
Phone: (213) 821-6364
Office: VKC 351

LINKS
Curriculum Vitae
Faculty Profile on Departmental Website
Personal Website
 

Education

  • A.B. History of Science, Harvard University
  • M.A. History, Princeton University
  • Ph.D. History, Princeton University

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History

Tenure Track Appointments
  • Assistant Professor, University of Southern California, 08/2006-  
PostDoctoral Appointments
  • Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of Southern California, 08/2004-06/2006  

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests
Daniela Bleichmar holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Art History and History. She was trained as a cultural historian of early modern science, specializing in the history of visual culture and the natural sciences in Europe and the Spanish Americas in the period 1500-1800. Her work focuses on the production and uses of visual material in science, the history of collecting and display, the history of the book, and the history of the Spanish empire.

Dr. Bleichmar is currently finishing a book entitled Visible Empire. Colonial Botany and Visual Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Hispanic World, under contract with the University of Chicago Press. In this book, she examines five scientific expeditions sent by the Spanish crown to the Americas and the Philippines between 1777 and 1808. These expeditions brought together naturalists and artists, who collaborated to produce thousands of illustrations of imperial nature. The book discusses the status and uses of images in eighteenth-century natural history; the importance of visual material in training the expert eyes and skilled hands of naturalists; the role of print culture in establishing a common vocabulary of scientific illustration; the interaction among visual evidence, textual evidence, and material evidence; and the ways in which colonial naturalists and artists appropriated and transformed European models, producing hybrid, local representations.

Her research and teaching interests include the history of collecting and display; interactions between art and science; Iberia, the Spanish Americas, and the Atlantic World; colonialism and imperialism; print, books, and reading; scholarly practices; travel; and anatomy and medicine. At USC, she has taught undergraduate courses on the history of the book and reading, on visual and material culture in colonial Latin America and early modern Europe, and on artistic and cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia in the early modern world, as well as graduate seminars on the history of collecting and display and the history of the book.

Dr. Bleichmar is the author of multiple articles on visual culture and natural history in the Spanish empire (detailed below) and a co-editor of Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800 (Stanford University Press, 2008). She is currently co-editing with Peter Mancall a volume entitled Collecting across Cultures in the Early Modern World, which will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. She is also working on two new projects, one on collecting in the Spanish Empire and the other on traditions of visual evidence in the Spanish Empire.

***** ON LEAVE ACADEMIC YEAR 2009-2010 *****

Research Specialties
Early Modern Visual and Material Culture, Early Modern Science, History of Collecting and Display, Spanish Empire/Colonial Latin American Art

Affiliations with Research Centers, Labs, and Other Institutions

  • USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute,http://www.usc.edu/emsi
  • Visual Studies Graduate Certificate,http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/visualstudies/
  • USC-Getty Program in the History of Collecting and Display,http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/art_history/research_programs/collecting/index.html/
  • Latin American Studies Initiative at USC,http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/latinamericanstudies/index.html

Publications

Book
Book Chapter
  • Bleichmar, D. (2008). A Visible and Useful Empire: Visual Culture and Colonial Natural History in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish World. Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires (1500-1800)/Stanford University Press.
  • Bleichmar, D. (2008). "Looking at Exotica in Baroque Collections: The Object, the Viewer, and the Collection as a Space," in The Gentleman, the Virtuoso, the Inquirer: Vincencio Juan de Lastanosa and the Art of Collecting in Early Modern Spain. pp. 63-77. Middlesex: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Bleichmar, D. (2008). "Training the Naturalist’s Eye in the Eighteenth Century: Perfect Global Visions and Local Blind Spots," in Visualising the Unseen, Imagining the Unknown, Perfecting the Natural: Art and Science in the 18th and 19th Centuries. pp. 1-24. Middlesex: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Bleichmar, D. (2007). Atlantic Competitions: Botanical Trajectories in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Empire. pp. 225-252. Science and Empire in the Atlantic World / Routledge.
  • Bleichmar, D. (2007). Training the Naturalist’s Eye in the Eighteenth Century: Perfect Global Visions and Local Blind Spots. pp. p. 166-190. Skilled Visions. Between Apprenticeship and Standards/Bergahn Books.
  • Bleichmar, D. (2007). Circulating Natural Knowledge in the Spanish Empire. Beyond the Black Legend: Spain and the Scientific Revolution / / Mas alla de la Leyenda Negra: España y la Revolucion Cientifica/Soler.
  • Bleichmar, D. (2004). Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica. pp. p. 83-99. Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics/Pennsylvania University Press.
Journal Article
  • Bleichmar, D. (2007). Exploration in Print: Books and Botanical Travel from Spain to the Americas in the Late Eighteenth Century. Huntington Library Quarterly/Huntington Library. Vol. vol. 70 (no. 1 (March 2007): 129-151)
  • Bleichmar, D. (2006). Painting as Exploration: Visualizing Nature in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Science. Colonial Latin American Review/Taylor and Francis. Vol. vol. 15 (no. 1 (June 2006): 81-104)

Honors and Awards

  • Getty Post-Doctoral Fellowship (for year 2008-2009), 3/2008-  
  • Faculty Fellowship, USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute (deferred), 2008-  
  • Honored by Smithsonian magazine as one of "America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences: 37 under 36." http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/innovators/bleichmar.html, 10/2007-  
  • Award for the best dissertation on Latin American visual culture 2004-2006, Association for Latin American Art, 1/2007-  
  • Short-Term Research Grant, International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University, 2007-  
  • USC-Del Amo Research Grant, 2007-  
  • Residency at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (deferred), Fall 2008   
  • USC "Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences" Research Grant, 7/2007-7/2008  
  • 2007 Jerry Stannard Memorial Award for best article on early modern natural history or materia medica published by a young scholar, for "Books, Bodies, and Fields", 2007  
  • Franklin Pease Memorial Prize for best article published in the Colonial Latin American Review in 2005 and 2006, 2007  

Service to the Profession

Professional Memberships
  • College Art Association, 2006-  
  • American Historical Association, 2004-  
  • History of Science Society, 1999-  
Faculty may update their profile by logging into the College portal from a computer on campus or off-campus via a VPN connection.