Peter N. Miller

The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts

Mission Improbable: Peiresc, Barberini and the Capuchins in Ethiopia

2002-2003: Spring

Peter N. Miller is Professor of Cultural History at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. He has been Mellon Instructor in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago (1993-1996), Research Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (1990-1993), and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Warburg Institute, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. His books include "The Song of the Soul: Understanding 'Poppea'" (Royal Musical Association, 1992 (with Iain Fenlon), an edition of "Joseph Priestley: Political Writings" (Cambridge University Press, 1993), "Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain" (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and "Peiresc's Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century" (Yale University Press, 2000). He is currently working on a companion book entitled, "Peiresc's Orient: The Antiquarian Imagination", which explores the beginning of European oriental studies in the context of the seventeenth-century antiquarianization of biblical scholarship.