Claire Bubb Rejoins the ISAW Faculty

On September 1, 2016, Claire Bubb will rejoin the ISAW faculty as Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow of Classical Literature and Science. She received her Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard University in 2014 with a dissertation considering the audience of Galen’s anatomical text, “On Anatomical Procedures,” and was subsequently a Visiting Assistant Professor at ISAW in 2014-15 and a Faculty Fellow at the NYU Classics Department in 2015-16.

Claire’s main research interests center on medicine and the biological sciences in the Graeco-Roman world, with a particular focus on Galen and Aristotle. She is currently working on a book about the practice of dissection in the Roman Empire, including its extended afterlife through Arabo-Latin translation and into the Early Modern period in Europe. Some of her other current projects consider physiology in Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia and Galen’s views on plagiarism and intellectual property. She also maintains interests in the literature and society of the high Roman Empire, ancient education, animals, and the social history of science and looks forward to a new project on the interest in and dissemination of scientific knowledge among laymen in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D.

During 2016-17, Claire will teach graduate seminars on “Galen in Alexandria” and “Aristotle on Animals” at ISAW.  The former seminar will approach Galen through the eyes of 6th century Alexandria, where his vast oeuvre began to be winnowed and condensed for use in medical education. The latter seminar will involve a close reading of Aristotle's De partibus animalium and other biological writings, especially De historia animalium and De generatione animalium.