Dr Stephen Clucas
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Overview
Overview
Biography
After a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sheffield, where he worked on the Hartlib Papers Project, Dr Clucas became a lecturer at Birkbeck in October 1991, Senior Lecturer in 2002 and Reader in 2007. He was also Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London in 2010.
Highlights
I am currently editing Thomas Hobbes's De corpore and related manuscripts with Timothy J. Raylor, which will be vols. 16-17 of the Clarendon Edition of the works of Thomas Hobbes.
I have organized a conference to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the death of the Elizabethan mathematician and natural philosopher, Thomas Harriot (1560-1621), hosted by the Warburg Institute, to be held on the 9-10 and 16-17 September. You can view the conference webpage here.
In 2017 I edited a special issue of the journal Ambix (64:2) entitled "The Royal Typographer and the Alchemist; Willem Sylvius and John Dee".
In 2011 a selection of my essays was published in the Ashgate Variorum Collected Studies series, entitled Magic, Memory and Natural Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
Qualifications
- PhD, University of Kent at Canterbury
- BA, Bangor University
Administrative responsibilities
- Course Director MA Renaissance Studies
Visiting posts
- Vossius Centre Senior Fellowship, University of Amsterdam, 01-2020 to 04-2020
- Senior Research Fellow, EXC 2020 Temporal Communities, , Freie Universität Berlin, 11-2022 to 12-2022
- Trent R Dames History Fellow, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 08-2014 to 09-2014
- Early Modern Thought Research Theme Visiting Fellow, University of Otago, New Zealand, 08-2012 to 09-2012
- Visitor, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, 09-2007 to 12-2007
Professional activities
Founding Co-Editor, Intellectual History Review, 2007-2020
Advisory Board member, International Society for Intellectual History (2020-present)
Executive Committee Member, International Society for Intellectual History, 2006-2020.
Council Member of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, 2001-present.
Council Member of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 2002-2010.
Thomas Harriot Seminar, Vice-Chairman 1990–2013. Chairman, 2013-present.
Council Member, Leonardo da Vinci Society, 2016-present.
Founder and co-organizer EMPHASIS seminar for the history of early modern science and philosophy, 2003-present.
Member of Editorial Board for the Springer book series International Archives of the History of Ideas, 2010- present.
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Research
Research
Research interests
- Early Modern Intellectual History
- History of Science
- Magic and Occult Philosophy
- History of Alchemy
Research overview
In 2000 I published a translation of Paolo Rossi's hugely influential study of the art of memory, Logic and the Art of Memory: The Quest for a Universal Language (Chicago University Press, reprinted in paperback by Continuum as part of their Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers series in 2006).
In 2002 I published a volume in the Roxburghe Club series: The Wizard Earl’s Advices to his Son, a transcription of manuscripts by Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland in Petworth house, co-edited with Gordon R. Batho.
In 2003, I published two edited volumes of essays which began life as conferences which I organized at Birkbeck. A Princely Brave Woman: essays on Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2003), was based on the first ever academic conference dedicated to this prolific and fascinating seventeenth-century author in 1993, and brought together essays on Cavendish's natural philosophy, poetry, drama and prose.
The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament: Literary and Historical Perspectives, which I co-edited with Dr Rosalind Davis brought together literary and political historians to examine a pivotal moment in the reign of King James I. The volume was the subject of an essay review by Blair Worden in the London Review of Books. (Both of these edited collections were reprinted in the Routledge Revivals Series in 2017).
In 2006 I published the fruits of another Birkbeck conference, John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought, which brought together an international group of scholars working on different aspects of Dee's career, including Nicholas H. Clulee, Deborah Harkness and William Sherman. In this volume I published an essay on Dee's angelic conversations and medieval magic, which has becoming an enduring research interest.
In 2011 I co-edited (with Valery Rees and Peter J. Forshaw) a collection of essays dedicated to the fifteenth-century Italian Philosopher Marsilio Ficino: Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his Influence, and in that same year published a collection of my own essays in the Variorum Collected Studies series, under the title Magic, Memory, and Natural Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.
I am currently working on a number of projects: a two volume edition of Thomas Hobbes's De corpore and related manuscripts for the Clarendon edition of the works of Thomas Hobbes; a short book John Dee and Renaissance Magic for Reaktion Books, and a collection of essays (co-edited with Simone Testa and Susan Haskins) in honour of my PhD supervisor, Letizia Panizza.
Research Centres and Institutes
- Birkbeck Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Worlds
Research clusters and groups
- Founder and co-organizer, EMPHASIS seminar
- Chairman, Thomas Harriot Seminar
- Advisory Board Member, International Society for Intellectual History
- Council Member, Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
- International Advisory Board Member, History of European Ideas
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
I welcome enquires from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of research interest. These include:
- early modern natural philosophy
- the history of magic
- the history of alchemy
- the art of memory
Doctoral alumni since 2013-14
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BEN THOMSON
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GERALD KILLINGWORTH
Teaching
Teaching modules
- MA Cultural & Critical Studies: Second Half Sessions (AREN050Z7)
- Connecting the Arts (AREN126S5)
- Doing English (AREN208Z4)
- European Drama and Theatre: Gods, Ideas and Adaptations (AREN247S5)
- Production of the Human: Decolonising the Canon (AREN257S4)
- Key Concepts in Cultural and Critical Studies (ENHU003S7)
- Dissertation MA Renaissance Studies (ENHU004D7)
- The Novel: Writing the Modern World (ENHU009S5)
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Publications
Publications
Article
- Clucas, Stephen and Raylor, T. (2021) Progress report on the Clarendon Edition of “De corpore” and Related Manuscripts. Hobbes Studies 34 (1), pp. 86-97. ISSN 0921-5891.
- Clucas, Stephen and Raylor, T.J. (2020) Kenelm Digby’s two treatises and the reception of the Galilean science of motion. Galileana: Journal of Galilean Studies 17, pp. 91-116. ISSN 1825-3903.
- Clucas, Stephen (2020) “The curious ways to observe weight in Water”: Thomas Harriot and his experiments on specific gravity. Early Science and Medicine 25 (4), pp. 302-327. ISSN 1383-7427 Online.
- Clucas, Stephen (2017) The royal typographer and the alchemist: John Dee, Willem Silvius, and the diagrammatic alchemy of the Monas Hieroglyphica. Ambix 64 (2), pp. 140-156. ISSN ISSN: 1745-8234 (Online).
- Clucas, Stephen (2017) An early European critic of Hobbes's De Corpore. Hobbes Studies 30 (1), pp. 4-27. ISSN 0921-5891.
- Clucas, Stephen (2012) ‘This paradoxall Restitution Iudaicall’: the apocalyptic correspondence of John Dee and Roger Edwardes. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (3), pp. 509-518. ISSN 0039-3681.
- Clucas, Stephen (2011) Margaret Cavendish's materialist critique of van Helmontian chymistry. Ambix 58 (1), pp. 1-12. ISSN 0002-6980.
- Clucas, Stephen (2010) Pythagorean number symbolism, alchemy, and the disciplina noua of John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica. Aries 10 (2), pp. 149-167. ISSN 1567-9896.
- Clucas, Stephen (2008) Galileo, Bruno and the rhetoric of dialogue in seventeenth-century natural philosophy. History of Science 46 (4), pp. 405-429. ISSN 0073-2753.
Book
- Clucas, Stephen (2011) Magic, Memory and Natural Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Variorum Collected Studies Series. (CS973), Farnham, UK: Ashgate. ISBN 9781409419754.
Book Review
- Clucas, Stephen (2021) Playing with (experimental) fire.
Book Section
- Clucas, Stephen (2022) Thomas Harriot in the Twenty-First Century: 25 years of the Harriot Lecture. In: Fox, R. (ed.) Thomas Harriot: Science and Discovery in the English Renaissance. London: Routledge. pp. 50-71. ISBN 9780367561376. (In Press)
- Clucas, Stephen (2022) Atomism, mechanism, and chymistry in the natural philosophy of Walter Warner. In: Lüthy, C. and Nicoli, E. (eds.) Atoms, Corpuscles and Minima in the Renaissance,. Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy and Science. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 9789004528918. (In Press)
- Clucas, Stephen (2022) Margaret Cavendish and the rhetoric and aesthetics of the microscopic image in Seventeenth-Century England. In: Walters, L. and Siegfried, B. (eds.) Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 51-68. ISBN 9781108780780.
- Clucas, Stephen (2022) Astrology, natural magic, and the scientific revolution. In: Miller, D.M. and Jalobeanu, Dana (eds.) The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 167-183. ISBN 9781108333108.
- Clucas, Stephen (2016) ‘Italian Renaissance Love Theory and the General Scholar in the Seventeenth Century’.. In: Muratori, C. and Paganini, G. (eds.) Early Modern Philosophers and the Renaissance Legacy. International Archives of the History of Ideas. Dordrecht, Germany: Springer. pp. 41-57. ISBN 9783319326023.
- Clucas, Stephen (2015) Memory in the Renaissance and Early Modern period. In: Nikulin, D. (ed.) Memory: A History. Oxford Philosophical Concepts. New York, U.S.: Oxford University Press. pp. 131-175. ISBN 9780199793839.
- Clucas, Stephen (2015) Exorcism, conjuration and the historiography of early modern ritual magic. In: Schneider, S. (ed.) Aisthetics of the Spirits: Spirits in Early Modern Science, Religion, Literature and Music. epiFaNIen - Frühe Neuzeit interdisziplinär,. Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, V&R Unipress. pp. 261-285. ISBN 9783847104230.
- Clucas, Stephen (2014) '"A double Perception in All Creatures": Margaret Cavendish's philosophical letters and Seventeenth-Century natural philosophy. In: Siegfried, B.R. and Sarasohn, L.T. (eds.) God and Nature in the Thought of Margaret Cavendish. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. pp. 121-139. ISBN 97814722439611.
- Clucas, Stephen (2011) John Dee’s annotations to Ficino’s translation of Plato. In: Clucas, Stephen and Forshaw, P.J. and Rees, V. (eds.) Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence. Brill's Studies in Intellectual History. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. pp. 227-248. ISBN 9789004188976.
- Clucas, Stephen (2010) ‘All the mistery of infinites’: mathematics and the atomism of Thomas Harriot. In: Rommevaux, S. (ed.) Mathématiques et connaissance du monde réel avant Galilée. Collection Histoire des savoirs. Montreuil, France: Edition Omniscience. pp. 113-154. ISBN 9782916097268.
- Clucas, Stephen (2010) Samuel Hartlib, intelligencing and technology in Seventeenth Century Europe. In: Kretzschmar, R. and Lorenz, S. (eds.) Leonardo da Vinci und Heinrich Schickhardt : zum Transfer technischen Wissens im vormodernen Europa. Stuttgart, Germany: W. Kohlhammer. pp. 58-75. ISBN 9783170217485.
- Clucas, Stephen (2010) Scientia and inductio scientifica in the Logica Hamburgensis of Joachim Jungius. In: Sorell, T. and Kraye, J. and Rogers, G.A.J. (eds.) Scientia in Early Modern Philosophy: Seventeenth-Century Thinkers on Demonstrative Knowledge from First Principles. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. New York, U.S.: Springer. pp. 53-70. ISBN 9789048130764.
- Clucas, Stephen (2009) Epilogue. In: Marr, A. (ed.) The Worlds of Oronce Fine: Mathematics, Instruments, and Print in Renaissance France. Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas. pp. 206-212. ISBN 9781900289962.
- Clucas, Stephen (2009) Thomas Harriot’s brief and true report: knowledge-making and the Roanoke voyage. In: Sloan, K. (ed.) European Visions: American Voices. Oxford, UK: British Museum Press. pp. 17-23. ISBN 9780861591725.
- Clucas, Stephen (2008) Cornelius Gemma and universal method. In: Hirai, H. (ed.) Cornelius Gemma, Cosmology, Medicine and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Louvain. Bruniana & campanelliana. Pisa. Italy: Fabrizio Serra. pp. 113-128. ISBN 9788862271189.
- Clucas, Stephen (2007) Dreams, prophecies and politics: John Dee and the Elizabethan court, 1575-85. In: Wiseman, Susan J. and Hodgkin, K. and O'Callaghan, M. (eds.) Reading the Early Modern Dream: The Terrors of the Night. Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 67-80. ISBN 9780415386012.
- Clucas, Stephen (2007) Alchemy and certainty in the Seventeenth Century. In: Principe, L.M. (ed.) Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry. Sagamore Beach, U.S.: Science History Publications USA. pp. 39-52. ISBN 9780881353969.
- Clucas, Stephen (2006) John Dee’s angelic conversations and the Ars notoria: Renaissance magic and mediaeval theurgy. In: Clucas, Stephen (ed.) John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées. New York, U.S.: Springer. pp. 231-274. ISBN 9781402042454.
Editorial
- Clucas, Stephen (2017) Introduction: John Dee, Alchemy, and Print Culture. Ambix 64 (2), pp. 107-114. Taylor and Francis. ISSN 0002-6980.
- Clucas, Stephen (2017) John Dee, alchemy, and print culture. Ambix 64 (2), pp. 107-114. Maney Publishing. ISSN 0002-6980.