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Michael Murphy Home  Directory Michael Murphy
| Courses Taught | |
HIS 70A - Early Modern Europe (ca.1400-1789)
HIS 2B - World History (ca.1500-Present)
When teaching my own courses, I attempt to do intellectual history (including the history of
science and technology) within the context of broader political and social developments. I
have also worked as a TA in numerous other courses: Ancient Greece and Rome, Tokugawa
Japan, World History, European Intellectual History, Old Regime France, Nineteenth-Century
France, and the Histories of Paris.
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| Research Focus | |
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19th-century France and Germany: Saint-Simonianism, Romanticism, Science and
Technology, Political Economy.
Dissertation Topic
The formative years of Michel Chevalier (1806-1879) and romantic political economy. |
| Long Description | |
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For the most part, I study French and German intellectual history of the long nineteenth century. Utopian visions, romantic world-views, scientific thought—and their relationships
with the development of “hard” institutions and infrastructures—dominate my historical imagination of the period. In this vein, I admire the work of Pierre Musso, Robert Richards,
Theodore Ziolkowski, and Jon Beecher.
My dissertation takes the form of an intellectual biography that aims to add depth and nuance to historians’ understandings of the Saint-Simonians’ world. Here, I start by following the
French intellectual/engineer/publicist Michel Chevalier from his family milieu in Limoges to his training in France, Germany, and Switzerland. I then examine his involvement with the Saint-Simonians and try to make sense of his subsequent abandonment of that social movement—when he left Paris in 1833 for a two-year trip to the United States. I conclude with his return to France and his reintegration into the politics and press of the July
Monarchy.
Other potential studies come to mind too. These topics include geology and mining education
in pre-industrial France and Germany, the short stories of Guy de Maupassant that addressed
the Franco-Prussian war, and Jules Verne’s biological and geological imagination. So far, my
research interests have led me to the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, les Archives Nationale, the
BnF, and l’École Nationale Supérieure des Mines à Paris. I have also made short excursions
to the Bundesarchiv in Berlin, and the Bibliothek des Deutschen Museums in Munich. |
| Education History | |
BA in History and English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
MA in History from the University of Vermont.
Ph.D. Candidacy, UC Santa Cruz 2007.
I intend to finish my Ph.D. during the 2010-2011 academic year. |
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