Author Talk with Christoph Irmscher
The Library's William Special Collections is honored to host a series of on-site and virtual programs in 2023 to celebrate the Library's 150th anniversary. On Thursday, June 8, 7:00 - 8:00 p.m., in the Goodwin Forum of the Main Library, author Christoph Irmscher will present Mr. Agassiz's Puzzle-Box: What To Do With 19th-Century Science Today. [Register for Christoph Irmscher Talk]
When Louis Agassiz arrived in the United States in the fall of 1846, he was one of the most famous scientists in the world. “The foreign professor,” as Emerson called him, took New England by storm, convincing even Thoreau, the village eccentric of Concord, to agree to collect specimens for him. A stream of unlucky creatures—fish, turtles, even an unsuspecting fox—would soon wend their way to Agassiz’s Cambridge lab. And however skeptical Thoreau is said to have been of Agassiz, he did once invite him to lecture at the Bangor Lyceum, an offer Agassiz declined (“My only business is …. nature”). How did American intellectuals who fell for Agassiz make sense of his racism? Drawing on recent work, my talk suggests that the distance between the woods of New England and the Amazon rainforest, where Agassiz staged his last scientific coup, isn't as great as one might imagine.
Christoph Irmscher is the author of several books, including The Poetics of Natural History, Longfellow Redux, LouisAgassiz: Creator of American Science, and Max Eastman: A Life. Among his editions are John James Audubon's Writings and Drawings and Stephen Spender's Poems Written Abroad. His most recent book is Audubon at Sea (with Richard King) for the University of Chicago Press. Irmscher is Distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University Bloomington, where he also directs the Wells Scholars Program.
This event is being co-sponsored by the Concord Free Public Library and the CFPL Corporation’s William Munroe Special Collections.
