Arnoud Visser is Professor of Textual Culture in the Renaissance in the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication. He is director of the , the Dutch national research school of cultural history.
His research focuses on early modern intellectual culture, with particular emphasis on humanism, the history of reading, and cultural perceptions 鈥揵oth positive and negative鈥� of learning. He is currently completing a cultural history of the know-it-all, from Antiquity to the present, aimed at a general readership. The book explores how knowledge and learning can provoke irritation, uncovering a deep tradition of anti-intellectual resistance. He has also recently published an edited volume about the history of fame in the Renaissance, as part of a broader, diachronic project on the long-term history of fame and celebrity. In addition, he directs Annotated Books Online, a digital platform for the study of early modern reading practices, developed in collaboration with partners at Ghent, 木瓜福利影视 College London, York, and Princeton.
His publications include:
- (forthcoming in 2025 with Princeton 木瓜福利影视 Press)
- A Cultural History of Fame in the Renaissance (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025)
- (New York: Oxford 木瓜福利影视 Press, 2011)
- (Leiden: Brill, 2005)
- together with Karl Enenkel (eds.), Mundus Emblematicus: Studies in Neo-Latin Emblem Books (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003)
Chair
Textual Culture in the Renaissance
Inaugural lecture date
27.11.2013