Ingenious Acts: The Nature of Invention in Early Modern Europe

9:00-9:45: Coffee and Pastries

9:45-10:00: Opening Remarks (Peter Mancall, Alex Marr)

10:00-11:30: Session I
Chair: Peter Mancall (USC)
Paul Binski (Cambridge University): Gothic Invention
Elly Truitt (Bryn Mawr College): History and Invention in the Middle Ages

11:30-11:45: Coffee

11:45-12:30: Session II
Chair: Mordechai Feingold (Caltech)
Rhodri Lewis (University of Oxford): Literate Experience? Francis Bacon on Reading, Imagination and Discovery

12:30-1:30: Lunch

1:30-3:00: Session III
Chair: Deborah Shuger (UCLA)
Bruce Smith (USC): The Congeniality of Shakespeare’s Genius
Timothy Chesters (Royal Holloway, University of London): Montaigne: The Lure of Invention

3:00-3:15: Coffee

3:15-4:45: Session IV
Chair: Mary Terrall (UCLA)
Matthew L. Jones (Columbia University): Reinventing the (Stepped) Wheel: Invention and Nescience around Enlightenment Calculating Machines
Daniel Rosenberg (University of Oregon): Data Before the Fact

10:00-10:30 Coffee and Pastries

10:30-12:00: Session V
Chair: Sheryl Reiss (USC)
Sean Roberts (USC): Inventing Engraving in Vasari’s Florence
Katherine Graham Isard (Columbia University): Vincenzo Scamozzi, Architectural Commonplaces, and Architectural Ingenuity

12:00-1:00: Lunch

1:00-2:30: Session VI
Chair: David Brafman (Getty Research Institute)
Michael Cole (Columbia University): What did Michelangelo Invent?
Frances Gage (Buffalo State College, SUNY): ‘Fantasia’ and the Habit of Invention in Seicento Rome

2:30-2:45: Coffee

2:45-4:15: Session VII
Chair: Kristine Haugen (Caltech)
Jessica Ratcliff (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): “Pretended Good and Profitable”: Vernacular Representations of Projectors and Technological Invention,
c. 1630-70
Vera Keller (USC/University of Oregon): The Murder of Invention

4:15-4:30 Concluding remarks