Profile
Richard Calis is an Assistant Professor in Cultural History at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视, who specializes in the history of science and intellectual history. Most of his research revolves around questions of cultural exchange, and the ways in which people across the early modern world made sense of their surroundings.
His first book, T(Cambridge, MA: Harvard 木瓜福利影视 Press, 2025) explores how cultural and religious difference was studied in early modern Europe. He is currently developing a second project about the role of dialogue in divided societies, for which he recently received a . Other research concerns the history of Utrecht 木瓜福利影视, , and the role of households in early modern art and science. He is part of the steering committee of an looking to integrate the histories of sciences and humanities and a founding member of a at the Huizinga Institute.
Before coming to Utrecht, he was a Research Fellow in History at Trinity College, Cambridge. He received his PhD from Princeton 木瓜福利影视 and studied at the 木瓜福利影视 of Amsterdam and the Universit脿 Ca' Foscari Venezia. He has been a visiting researcher at the 木瓜福利影视 of T眉bingen, the 木瓜福利影视 of Oxford, and Harvard's Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, DC. He loves teaching and always likes to hear from students about their interests and about what they are reading and writing about.
PhD and Postdoc Supervision:
Femke Valkhoff, How do Cities Make Women? Empowerment, Self-Development, and Learned Identities in the Early Modern Dutch City (together with Nina Geerdink and Arnoud Visser)
Rosa de Jong, Colonial History of Botanical Gardens (with Mette Bruinsma)
Book:
The Discovery of Ottoman Greece: Knowledge, Encounter, and Belief in the Mediterranean World of Martin Crusius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 木瓜福利影视 Press, 2025). .
Reviews: ;
Podcasts: ;
Key Publications:
"The Lutheran Experience in the Ottoman Middle East: Stephan Gerlach (1546-1612) and the History of Lutheran Accommodation", The English Historical Review (2024): 94-125. .
鈥淭he Impossible Reformation: Protestant Europe and Greek Orthodox Church鈥�, Past & Present 259.1 (2023): 43-76.
"Martin Crusius's Lost Byzantine Legacy", in: Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff (eds.), The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 木瓜福利影视 Press, 2021) 105-142.
鈥淩econstructing the Ottoman Greek World: Early Modern Ethnography in the Household of Martin Crusius.鈥� Renaissance Quarterly 72.1 (2019): 148-93. Honorable Mention William Nelson Prize.
鈥淧assing the Book: Cultures of Reading in the Winthrop Family, 1580鈥�1730鈥�, Past & Present 241 (2018): 69-141 (with Frederic Clark, Christian Flow, Anthony Grafton, Madeline McMahon, Jennifer Rampling).
鈥淏uilding a Digital Bookwheel Together: Annotated Books Online and the History of Early Modern Reading Practices鈥�, Bibliothecae.it III (2014): 63-80 (with Arnoud Visser). .
Other Output:
鈥淎t the dawn of Byzantine Studies: Martin Crusius (1526-1607): Interview for 鈥楤yzantium & Friends鈥� Podcast.鈥�
"A New History of Orientalism", Marginalia: Los Angeles Review of Books (2021). .
Podcast with Pamela Long about her Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome (Chicago 木瓜福利影视 Press, 2018) for the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog. (together with Lilian Datchev). Available here.
鈥淭he Winthrops and their Books: A Transatlantic Tale鈥�, The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History (2015; with Madeline McMahon).
鈥淭wo Editors and their Theophrastus鈥�, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog (2015). Available here.
鈥淧ersonal Philology鈥�, Journal of the History of Ideas Blog (2015). .
Reviews
William P. Weaver, Homer in Wittenberg: Rhetoric, Scholarship, Prayer (Oxford and New York, 2022). Classical Philology 119.4 (2024): 576-679.
Andrew L. Thomas, The Apocalypse in Reformation Nuremberg: Jews and Turks in Andreas Osiander's World (Ann Arbor: 木瓜福利影视 of Michigan Press, 2022). Central European History 57.2 (2024): 257-259. .
Stefano Villani, Making Italy Anglican: Why the Book of Common Prayer was Translated into Italian (Oxford, 2022). Journal of Religious History 48.1 (2024): 90-92. .
Giuseppe Marcocci, The Globe on Paper: Writing Histories of the World in Renaissance Europe (Oxford, 2020) and Stuart McManus, Empire of Eloquence: The Classical Rhetorical Tradition in Colonial Latin America and the Iberian World (Cambridge, 2021). Journal of Early Modern History 27 (2023): 255-271. .
Ulrike Strasser, Missionary Men in the Early Modern World: German Jesuits and Pacific Journeys (Amsterdam, 2020). Renaissance Studies 37.1 (2023): 130-132.
Emily Michelson and Matthew Coneys Wainwright (eds). A Companion to Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome (Leiden, 2020). Renaissance Quarterly 75.3 (2022).
Peter Burke, The Polymath: A Cultural History from Leonardo da Vinci to Susan Sontag (New Haven, 2020). English Historical Review 137.585 (2022): 649-651.
Ulinka Rublack (ed.), Protestant Empires: Globalizing the Reformations (Cambridge, 2020). German History 39.4 (2021): 628-629.
Carolyn Yerkes and Heather Hyde Minor, Piranesi Unbound (Princeton, 2021). International Journal of the Classical Tradition(2021).
Robert John Clines, A Jewish Jesuit in the Eastern Mediterranean (Cambridge, 2019). Mediterranean Historical Review 36.2 (2021): 286-288.
Floris Verhaart, Classical Learning in Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic, 1690-1750: Beyond the Ancients and the Moderns (Oxford, 2020). History of Humanities 6.2 (2021): 696-699. .
Luca Scholz, Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire (Oxford: 2020). H-Soz Kult Online.
Karen Hollewand, The Banishment of Beverland. Sex, Sin, and Scholarship in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic (Leiden, 2019). Early Modern Low Countries 4.2 (2020): 263-266.
Hannah Murphy, A New Order of Medicine. The Rise of Physicians in Reformation Nuremberg (Pittsburgh, 2019). H-Soz Kult Online.