Christopher D. Johnson Associate Professor of Comparative Literature Harvard University 16 Quincy Street, Dana Palmer House, Rm. 204 Cambridge, MA 02138 telephone: 617-496-7187; fax: 617-496-4343 e-mail: [email protected] homepage: http://scholar.harvard.edu/christopherdjohnson/
Employment:
2004-present Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature; Associated Faculty in the Literature Concentration, Harvard University
2003-04 Assistant Professor of English, Department of English, Northwestern University
2002-03 Lecturer in Literature Literature Concentration, Harvard University
Education:
1995-2001 Ph.D., Department of Comparative Literature, New York University. Dissertation: Hyperboles: Exemplary Excess in Early Modern English and Spanish Poetry and Its Origins in Classical Rhetoric and Epic
1986-1991 B.A., St. John’s College
Books:
Memory, Metaphor, and Aby Warburg’s Atlas of Images (Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library, 2012).
Hyperboles: The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, with Harvard University Press, 2010).
Selected Poetry of Francisco de Quevedo: A Bilingual Edition, translator and editor (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Current book projects:
Encyclopedic Kinds: Circles of Learning in the Late Renaissance
Exorbitant Donne: A Study in Poetics, Rhetoric, and Epistemology
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Journal articles:
“N+2: A Late Renaissance Poetics of Enumeration.” Modern Language Notes (Comparative Literature issue) 127.5 (forthcoming 2012).
“Making the ‘round of knowledge’ in Bacon’s Wake: Naudé, Comenius, and Browne.” Society and Politics (Special issue: Disciplines and Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Thought) 5.2 (2011): 9-31.
“‘El Homero español’: Translation and Shipwreck.” Translation and Literature 20.2 (2011): 157-174.
“Coincidence of Opposites: Bruno, Calderón, and the Renaissance Drama of Ideas.” Renaissance Drama (Special issue: Italy in the Drama of Europe) 36/37 (2010): 319- 352.
“‘Periwigged Heralds’: Epistemology and Intertextuality in Early American Cometography.” Journal of the History of Ideas 65.3 (2004): 399-419.
“Florio’s ‘conversion’ of Montaigne, Sidney, and Six Patronesses.” Cahiers Élisabéthians 64 (2003): 9-18.
“Intertextuality and Translation: Browne, Borges, and Quevedo.” Translation and Literature 11.2 (2002): 174-194.
“De Doctrina Gongorina: Góngora’s Defense of Obscurity.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 77 (2000): 21-46.
Book articles:
“Puntos errantes: la poética inmanente de Paradiso,” in Asedios a lo increado: Nuevas aproximaciones a Lezama Lima, ed. Jorge Marturano, Marta Hernández- Salván, and Juan Pablo Lupi (Madrid: Editorial Verbum, forthcoming 2013).
“Pathosformeln: Warburg, Cassirer und der Fall Giordano Bruno,” in Ethos und Pathos der Wissenschaften. Studien zur wissenschaftlichen Persona zwischen 1750 und 1930, ed. Carlos Spoerhase, Dirk Werle, Ralf Klausnitzer (Munich: Wallstein Verlag, forthcoming 2013).
“Baroque Poetry,” in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th edition, ed. Roland Greene and Stephen Cushman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
“Conceit,” in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th edition, ed. Roland Greene and Stephen Cushman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
“Clavius’s Number and its Afterlife in Donne, Wilkins, and Kircher,” in Arts of Calculation:
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Numerical Thought in Early Modern Europe, ed. D. Glimp and M. Warren (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004).
“Appropriating Troy: Ekphrasis in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece,” in Fantasies of Troy: Classical Tales and the Social Imaginary in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Alan Shepard and Stephen D. Powell (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004).
Translations:
[with Claudia Wedepohl] “‘From the Arsenal to the Laboratory’: An Autobiographical Sketch by Aby M. Warburg.” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, 19.1 (2012): 106-124.
Review articles/essays:
Luis de Góngora, Solitudes, tr. Edith Grossman, in Translation and Literature, forthcoming 2013.
Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, Le verbe fait image: iconoclasmes, écriture figurée et théologie de l’incarnation chez les poètes métaphysiques. Le cas de George Herbert, in Modern Philology, forthcoming 2013.
Bradley J. Nelson, The Persistence of Presence: Emblem and Ritual in Baroque Spain, in Modern Language Notes, forthcoming 2013.
“Blumenberg’s ‘huge field’: Metaphorology and Intellectual History,” in Intellectual History Review 22.2 (2012): 289-92.
Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquest, eds. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Monika Kaup, in Calíope: Journal of Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry 17.2 (2011): 121-27.
Stanley Cavell, Little Did I Know: Excerpts from Memory, in Modern Language Notes 125.5 (2010): 1147-1151.
Patrick Cheney, Marlowe’s Republican Authorship: Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime, in Renaissance Quarterly 63.1 (2010): 318-319.
Dirk Werle, Copia librorum. Problemgeschichte imaginierter Bibliotheken 1580-1630, in Renaissance Studies 22.4 (2008): 18-20.
Lois Parkinson Zamora, The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction, in The Comparatist 32 (2008): 216-218.
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European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance, eds. Patrick Cheney and Frederick A. de Armas, in Renaissance Quarterly 57.2 (2004): 609-610.
Invited lectures and talks:
“Aby Warburg’s Renaissance,” Renaissance and Early Modern Studies Program, Brown University, November 2012.
“Figuring the Baroque: Warburg and Benjamin.” Colloquium on Warburg, Benjamin, and Kulturwissenschaft, Warburg Institute, London, June 2012.
“Finding the silva in the Sylva Sylvarum.” Workshop on Francis Bacon and the Sylva Sylvarum, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, Princeton, May 2012.
“Pathosformeln: Warburg, Cassirer, und der Fall Giordano Bruno.” Conference on Ethos und Pathos des Logos. Wissenschaftliches Ethos und Pathos der Wissenschaften in historischer und systematischer Perspektive, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Humboldt University, Berlin, November 2011.
“N + 2: A Renaissance Poetics of Enumeration.” Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA, Los Angeles, May 2011.
“Reading Material and Imaginary Books: Bacon’s Sylva and Browne’s Library.” Department of English, Princeton University, Princeton, April 2011.
“Cesi’s Lynx, Tabular Reason, and the Natural Desire to Know.” Department of Philosophy and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, March 2011.
“N + 2: A Renaissance Poetics of Enumeration.” Workshop in Poetics, Stanford University, Stanford, March 2011.
“Bacon’s Sylva and Browne’s Library.” Renaissance Colloquium, Harvard University, Cambridge, December 2010.
“Reason, Rhetoric, and the Tropes of Humanism.” St. John’s College, Santa Fe, November 2009.
“Coincidences of Opposites: Bruno and Calderón.” Italy in the Drama of Europe: Conference in Honor of Louise George Clubb, University of California, Berkeley, August 2009.
“Scattered Treasure: The New World Encyclopedism of Sahagún and Hernández.” The Encyclopedic Impulse in Early Modern Europe, Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar, Cambridge, June 2009.
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“‘El Homero español’: Shipwreck and Translation.” Workshop of the Reception of Odysseus, Harvard University, Cambridge, April 2009.
“Hyperbole as ‘das Mystische’: Wittgenstein and Cavell.” Humanities Center, Philosophy,
Poetics, and Religion Seminar, Harvard University, Cambridge, February 2009.
“Enzyklopädik, Kombinatorik, und Lyrik: Der Fall von Quirinus Kuhlmann.” Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, June 2008.
“Breaking the Encyclopaedia: Francis Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum.” Emphasis Seminar, University of London, London, April 2008.
“Donne’s Hyperbolics.” Renaissance Colloquium, Harvard University, Cambridge, February 2007.
“On the Copia of Words and Things in Quintilian, Quincunxes, and Queneau.” Literature Concentration, Harvard University, Cambridge, April 2006.
“Gadamer’s Theory of Taste.” Early Modern Colloquium, Northwestern University, Chicago, May 2004.
“Hyperbola/e.” Humanities Center, Renaissance Studies Seminar, Harvard University, Cambridge, May 2003.
Conference papers:
“Quevedo, Bosch, Spinoza, and the Baroque Ethics of Transformation,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Washington D.C., April 2012.
“Jáuregui’s Lucan,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Washington D. C., March 2012.
“‘[E]in Nachklang des Morgenlandes’: Hegel’s Mystical, Orientalist Spinoza.” International Association of Philosophy and Literature, Special Panel, Taiwan, 2011.
“From Treasure to Table, Mexico to Rome: Hernández, Cesi, and the Poetics of Commentary.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, 2011.
“Góngora sive Spinoza: Reading a Baroque Library.” Southern Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Baton Rouge, October 2010.
“The Poetics of José Lezama Lima’s plutonismo.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, New Orleans, April 2010.
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“Über epistemologische und textuale Räume bei Quirinus Kuhlmann.” Thirteenth Meeting of the Wolfenbütteler Arbeitskreis für Barockforschung, Wolfenbüttel, August 2009.
“Espacio ético y gnóstico: Quevedo y Lezama Lima.” Latin American Studies Association Annual Conference, Rio de Janeiro, June 2009.
“Cavell and the Hyperbolic.” Stanley Cavell and Literary Criticism, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, May 2008.
“Navigating Trauma in Góngora’s Poetry of Extremes.” Modern Language Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, December 2007.
“Deleuze and the New World Baroque.” International American Studies Association World Congress, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, September 2007.
“On Spanish Renaissance Encyclopedism.” Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Miami, April 2007.
“Hypertely and Lezama Lima, or a New World Baroque Mutant.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Puebla, March 2007.
“Aby Warburg’s Bricolâge.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Princeton University, Princeton, March 2006.
“Quintilian’s Ambivalent Defense of Hyperbole.” International Society of Rhetoric Bi-Annual Conference, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, June 2005.
“Marlowe’s Lucan.” Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, Cambridge, April 2005.
“Gadamer, Gracián, and Taste.” Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, New York, March 2004.
“On the Early Modern Hypertext and Other Anachronisms.” Renaissance Comparative Prose Conference, Purdue University, West Lafayette, November 2004.
“Rabelais’s tarande.” Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society, Western Washington University, Bellingham, May 2004.
“Gendering the Gaze: The Trojan Ekphrasis in The Rape of Lucrece.” The Fall of Troy in the Renaissance Imagination, University of Toronto, Toronto, September 2002.
“The Petrarchan Legacy in Florio’s Montaigne.” Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, April 2001.
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“Clavius’s Number and its Early Modern Afterlife.” Arts of Calculation: Counting, Measurement, and Cultural Production, University of Miami Symposium on Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque Studies, Miami, February 2001.
“Hyperbole in Donne’s Satires,” Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, March 2000.
“Two Baroque Dreams: Descartes and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, April 1999.
“Hyperbolic Repetition in Sir Thomas Browne’s Garden of Cyrus.” Comparative Literature Graduate Student Conference, New York University, New York, February 1998.
“The Rhetoric of the Curse in Richard III.” Shakespeare and Philosophy Conference, New York University, New York, April 1997.
Prizes and Honors:
2010 Premio Valle-Inclán (joint winner) from the Times Literary Supplement with the Translators Association of the Society of Authors for Selected Poetry of Francisco de Quevedo: A Bilingual Edition Dean’s Outstanding Dissertation Prize in the Humanities, New York University, 2000-2001
Fellowships and Grants:
A Clark/Cooke Fund Award, Harvard University, 2009-11 Herzog August Bibliothek Fellowship, Herzog August Bibliothek, 2008 Clark/Cooke Fund Award, Harvard University, 2004-06 Mellon Issues in Interpretation Seminar Grant, NEH, 2000 Lane Cooper Dissertation Fellowship, New York University, 1999-2000 Grant-in-Aid, Folger Institute, 1998
Teaching experience:
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Department of Comparative Literature Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, 2004 to present. Courses taught: Proseminar: Literary Theory and Methods (CL299); Metaphor (CL286); Renaissance Rhetoric and Poetics (CL276); Renaissance and Baroque Drama (CL260); Baroque and Neobaroque Literature (CL 246); Reading Spinoza and Leibniz with Gilles Deleuze (CL241); Comparative Literature and Intellectual History (CL215); Fictional Encyclopedias (LIT122); Literature and Science (LIT116); On the Essay (LIT 108); On Lyric (LIT106); Sophomore Tutorial (LIT97a&b); “Strange
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Mutations”: Wonder, Faith, Skepticism, and Disbelief in Western Antiquity and the Renaissance (CB29)
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, Department of English Assistant Professor of English, 2003-04
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, The Literature Concentration Lecturer on Literature, 2002-03
New York University, New York, NY, Comparative Literature Department Adjunct Professor, Science and the Literary Imagination, Fall 2001
City College, New York, NY, English Department Adjunct Professor, English 331, Critical Thinking and Narrative, Spring 2001
City College, New York, NY, English Department Adjunct Professor, Graduate Shakespeare Seminar, Fall 2000
New York University, New York, NY, General Studies Program Adjunct Professor, Cultural Foundations II, Spring, 2001
New York University, New York, NY, Morse Academic Plan, Core Curriculum Preceptor, Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the Renaissance, Spring 2002, Spring 1999, Fall 1998, Spring 1998 Preceptor, Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the 19th Century, Spring 2001 Preceptor, Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Fall 2000 Preceptor, World Cultures: Mesoamerican Civilization, Fall 1997 Preceptor, Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the Enlightenment, Fall 1996
Académie de Paris, Paris, France Instructor, French Literature and Philosophy. Summer 1999-2000
Teaching awards:
Certificate of Distinction, Harvard University, Fall 2005
Service:
2010-11 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Fellowships Selection Committee, Harvard University
2007-09 Lecture and Special Events Committee (Chair), Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
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2006-07 Graduate Admissions Committee (Chair), Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
2005-07 Graduate Job Placement Committee, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University
2005-06 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Fellowships Selection Committee, Harvard University
Professional memberships:
Modern Language Association American Comparative Literature Association International Society of the History of Rhetoric International Society for Intellectual History International Association for Philosophy and Literature
Related professional experience:
Co-Organizer (with Christopher Krebs), The Classical Traditions Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University, 2007 to 2012
Outside Reader, German Studies Review, Modern Language Notes, Renaissance Drama, 2012
Co-Organizer (with Tom Conley), The Encyclopedic Impulse in Early Modern Europe, Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar, June 2009
Outside reader, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2008
Organizer, American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Panel on Renaissance Humanism After Theory, Princeton University, 2006
Participant, Mellon Issues in Interpretation Seminar: “Tradition, Revision, and Continuity in Renaissance and Medieval Literary Studies,” with Professor Patrick Cheney, 2000
Participant, Folger Institute Seminar “Explorations of Space, Mapping, and Early Modern Literature,” with Professor Tom Conley, 1998
Editor, Renaissance News and Notes (published by the Renaissance Society of America), 1998
Languages:
Spanish, German, French, Latin, and some Italian