Paul Nelles
Associate Professor – 16th-18th c. France and Italy; intellectual and cultural history; religious cultures; history of the book and libraries; historical writing; history of food
- B.A. (UBC), M.A. (Johns Hopkins), Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins)
- Email Paul Nelles
My research centres on the intellectual culture of the Renaissance, and especially on the libraries, public and private, that both fostered that culture and were in turn served by it. I have published on books, readers and libraries in early modern France, Italy, England and Germany, and on the role of writing and communication in the early Society of Jesus. I teach undergraduate courses in early modern European history, and supervise graduate students pursuing research in the cultural, religious, and intellectual history of early modern Europe.
Professor Nelles is currently open to accepting new graduate students.
Research Interests:
- history of the book
- history of libraries
- history of communication
- early modern Catholicism, especially the Jesuits
- history of food
Select Publications
鈥淢artyrs and Madonnas: In谩cio de Azevedo, the Brazil Martyrs, and the Global Circulation of the Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore鈥 Religions 14, no. 5 (2023): .
鈥淢ovement and Mobility in the Early Modern World: An Introduction.鈥 (With Rosa Salzberg.) In Connected Mobilities: the Practice and Experience of Movement in the Early Modern World, edited by P. Nelles and R. Salzberg, 7鈥38. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2023.
鈥淒evotion in Transit. Agnus Dei, Jesuit Missionaries, and Global Salvation in the Sixteenth Century.鈥 In Connected Mobilities: the Practice and Experience of Movement in the Early Modern World, edited by P. Nelles and R. Salzberg, 185鈥214. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2023.
鈥淜nowledge.鈥 In A Cultural History of Ideas. Volume 3. The Renaissance, edited by J. Kraye, 15鈥38. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
鈥淟ibraries and Catalogs.鈥 InThe Princeton Companion to the History of Information. Ed. A. Blair, P. Duguid, and A.T. Grafton. Pp. 567鈥78. Princeton, 2021.
鈥淛esuit Letters.鈥 In The Oxford Handbook of Jesuits. Ed. I. G. Zupinov. Pp. 44鈥72. Oxford, 2019.
Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe. Beyond Production, Circulation, and Consumption. Co-editor with D. Bellingradt and J. Salman. London, 2017.
鈥淭he Vatican Library Alphabets, Luca Orfei, and Graphic Media in Sistine Rome.鈥 In For the Sake of Learning: essays in honor of Anthony Grafton. Ed. A. Blair and A.-S. Goeing. Pp. 441鈥68. Leiden, 2016.
鈥Cosas y cartas: Scribal Production and Material Pathways in Jesuit Global Communication (1547鈥1573).鈥 Journal of Jesuit Studies (2015): 421鈥50.
鈥淐hanciller铆a en colegio: la producci贸n y circulaci贸n de papeles jesuitas en el siglo XVI.鈥 Cuadernos de Historia Moderna. Anejos 13 (2014): 49鈥70. (Special issue: La Memoria del mundo: clero, erudici贸n y cultura escrita en el mundo ib茅rico (siglos XVI鈥揦VIII). Ed. F. Palomo.)
鈥淪tocking a Library: Montaigne, the Market, and the Diffusion of Print.鈥 In La Librairie de Montaigne. Ed. P. Ford and N. Kenny. Pp. 1鈥24. Cambridge, 2012.
鈥淪eeing and Writing: the Art of Observation in the Early Jesuit Missions.鈥 Intellectual History Review 20/3 (2010): 317-333. Special issue: Note-taking and Notebooks from Da Vinci to Darwin. Ed. Ann Blair and Richard Yeo.
鈥淩eading and Memory in the Universal Library: Conrad Gessner and the Renaissance Book.鈥 Ars Reminiscendi: Mind and Memory in Renaissance Culture. Ed. Donald Beecher and Grant Williams. Pp. 147-169. Toronto, 2009.
鈥淟ibros de papel, libri bianchi, libri papyracei: Note-Taking Techniques and the Role of Student Notebooks in the Early Jesuit Colleges.鈥 Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu 76 (2007): 75-112.
鈥淒u savant au missionnaire: la doctrine, les moeurs et l鈥櫭ヽriture de l鈥檋istoire chez les j茅suites.鈥 XVII si猫cle 59 (2007): 669-689.
鈥淭he Uses of Orthodoxy and Jacobean Erudition: Thomas James and the Bodleian Library.鈥 History of Universities 22 (2007): 21-70.