Research

My research focuses on the production and uses of visual materials in science; interactions between art and science in the early modern period; early modern visual and material cultures; the history of Iberia, the Spanish Americas, and the Atlantic World; the history of colonialism, imperialism, and global exchanges; the history of collecting and display; the history of print, books, and reading; and the history of travel, particularly in terms of visual and material exchanges.

For a complete list of publications, please consult my C.V.

Current Book Projects

Visible Empire. Colonial Botany and Visual Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Hispanic World (forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2010)

This book, based on my Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton University, History Department, 2005), studies the connections between visual culture, scientific travel, and imperial administration in the Spanish world at the end of the eighteenth century. Some of the topics I discuss in this work include: 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.

You can read more about this project in a story published in Smithsonian magazine.

Collecting across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic, edited by Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C. Mancall (forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2010)

A collection of essays on global cross-cultural collecting in the early modern Atlantic (widely construed). This volume is a result of a series of workshops and conferences organized in collaboration with the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.

Publications

Books

Daniela Bleichmar, Paula DeVos, Kristin Huffine, and Kevin Sheehan (eds.), Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires (1500-1800) (Stanford University Press, 2008)

This collection of essays is the first book published in English to provide a thorough survey of the practices of science in the Spanish and Portuguese empires from 1500 to 1800. Authored by an interdisciplinary team of specialists from the United States, Latin America, and Europe, the book consists of fifteen original essays, as well as an introduction and an afterword by renowned scholars in the field. The topics discussed include navigation, exploration, cartography, natural sciences, technology, and medicine. This volume is aimed at both specialists and non-specialists, and is designed to be useful for teaching. It will be a major resource for anyone interested in colonial Latin America. (From the Stanford University Press Spring 2008 catalogue.)
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Articles

“A Visible and Useful Empire: Visual Culture and Colonial Natural History in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish World,” in Daniela Bleichmar, Paula DeVos, Kristin Huffine, and Kevin Sheehan (eds.), Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires (1500-1800) (Stanford University Press, November 2008)
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“Atlantic Competitions: Botanical Trajectories in the Eighteenth-Century Spanish Empire,” in Nicholas Dew and James Delbourgo (eds.), Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (Routlege, 2008): 225-252
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 “Circulating Natural Knowledge in the Spanish Empire,” in William Eamon and Victor Navarro Brotons (eds.), Beyond the Black Legend: Spain and the Scientific Revolution / / Mas allá de la Leyenda Negra: España y la Revolución Científica (Soler, 2007)

“Exploration in Print: Books and Botanical Travel from Spain to the Americas in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 1 (March 2007): 129-151
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“Training the Naturalist’s Eye in the Eighteenth Century: Perfect Global Visions and Local Blind Spots,” in Cristina Grasseni (ed.), Skilled Visions. Between Apprenticeship and Standards (Berghahn Books, 2007): 166-190
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• Reprinted in: Andrew Graciano (ed.), Visualising the Unseen, Imagining the Unknown, Perfecting the Natural: Art and Science in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Academic Publishers, forthcoming 2008)
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“Painting as Exploration: Visualizing Nature in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Science,” Science and Nature in the Spanish Americas, special issue of the Colonial Latin American Review, vol. 15, no. 1 (June 2006): 81-104
*** This article received the Franklin Pease Memorial Prize for best article published in the journal in 2005 and 2006

 “Books, Bodies, and Fields: Sixteenth-Century Transatlantic Encounters with New World Materia Medica,” in Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (eds.), Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005): 83-99
*** This article received the Jerry Stannard Memorial Award for 2007
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