Caroline Winterer

Anthony P. Meier Family Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Stanford Humanities Center

The Remarkable Genius of Benjamin Franklin

 

Caroline Winterer specializes in American history of the pre-1900 period, especially the history of ideas, political theory, the history of science, and art history.

Her most recent book is American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). Her two other books are: The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1750-1900 (2007) and The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910 (2002).

She has published peer-reviewed articles in the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, William and Mary Quarterly, American Quarterly, Journal of the Early Republic, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and Modern Intellectual History.

Winterer has also curated two exhibits of rare books and artifacts: Ancient Rome & America at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia (2010) and also The American Enlightenment at the Stanford Library (2011).

She has received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Spencer Foundation, among others. For mapping the social network of Benjamin Franklin she received an American Ingenuity Award from the Smithsonian Institution in 2013; an article about Winterer’s project appeared in Smithsonian Magazine(Dec. 2013).