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Authors: Darrin M. McMahon
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biologists, and political philosophers as it is for historians, who might consider together why it is that human beings evince a need to draw hierarchical distinctions, even (or especially) in conditions of nominal equality. We might also ponder why it is that we show a propensity to base these distinctions in nature and the fatality of birth. By focusing on the tremendous fascination with genius and geniuses in the modern world, this book hopes to begin an answer.
I N WRITING THIS BOOK, I have benefited immensely from the kindness and expertise of others. If that is the case with all creative endeavors, it is especially so with this one, since genius touches on so many different domains. Science, psychology, sociology, historical aesthetics and the study of literature, music, art, and even theology and demonology all find their way into the study of genius, not to mention political history and the history of celebrity and fame.
For helping me to negotiate this varied and difficult terrain, I wish to thank, first of all, a number of institutions and individuals who helped me to organize conferences and symposia that were of great assistance in shaping my thinking. The ever-generous Martin Seligman and Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania helped bring together an extraordinary group of experts, including James Gleick, Douglas Hofstadter, Anders Ericcson, Rebecca Goldstein, Robert Scales, David Lubinski, Roy Baumeister, and Dean Keith Simonton, for two days of rewarding discussions in Philadelphia. Sarah Buck-Kachaluba, the humanities librarian at Florida State University, my own institution, along with the obliging staff at FSU’s Strozier Library, have been of great service in a number of ways, most immediately by helping to organize a one-day symposium, “Facets of Genius,” in February 2012, along with Professor Christian Weber and myself. Finally, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, generously allowed my friend and colleague Joyce Chaplin and me to bring together a dazzling array of scholars in May 2012 to consider genius for two days in the most congenial of settings.
Antoine Lilti graciously invited me to deliver a series of lectures and spend a month at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in the spring of 2010, whichproved of immense value (at least to me). David Armitage and Peter Gordon arranged for me to speak to an engaging audience at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University; Dan Edelstein and Keith Baker did the same at the French Culture Workshop at Stanford University; and Tony Judt, in the months before his death, had me one last time to the Remarque Institute at New York University to share my thoughts on genius before a stimulating group and to steal a precious moment with him. For much of my professional career, Tony served as a guardian angel and genius bonus . I am grateful to have known him, and I miss him every day.
I am also grateful to Carolina Armenteros for an invitation to deliver a keynote address at Jesus College, Cambridge, amid the Fifth International Colloquium on Joseph de Maistre; to Annie Jourdan for her hospitality and invitation to speak about evil geniuses before the faculty of European Studies at Amsterdam University; to Ivo Cerman for a chance to consider the “religion of genius” at the Historical Institute of the Czech National Academy of Science in Prague; to Hans Stauffacher for the opportunity to speak on “geniology” at the Institut für Religionswissenschaft at the Freie Universität in Berlin; and to Steven Vincent, Tony La Vopa, Malachi Hacohen, and the gracious participants at the Triangle Intellectual History Seminar at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina for an invitation to present a chapter of my work and for their temerity in reading it, much to its improvement. I also delivered papers on the subject of genius at the Western Society for French Historical Studies, the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe,
I N WRITING THIS BOOK, I have benefited immensely from the kindness and expertise of others. If that is the case with all creative endeavors, it is especially so with this one, since genius touches on so many different domains. Science, psychology, sociology, historical aesthetics and the study of literature, music, art, and even theology and demonology all find their way into the study of genius, not to mention political history and the history of celebrity and fame.
For helping me to negotiate this varied and difficult terrain, I wish to thank, first of all, a number of institutions and individuals who helped me to organize conferences and symposia that were of great assistance in shaping my thinking. The ever-generous Martin Seligman and Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania helped bring together an extraordinary group of experts, including James Gleick, Douglas Hofstadter, Anders Ericcson, Rebecca Goldstein, Robert Scales, David Lubinski, Roy Baumeister, and Dean Keith Simonton, for two days of rewarding discussions in Philadelphia. Sarah Buck-Kachaluba, the humanities librarian at Florida State University, my own institution, along with the obliging staff at FSU’s Strozier Library, have been of great service in a number of ways, most immediately by helping to organize a one-day symposium, “Facets of Genius,” in February 2012, along with Professor Christian Weber and myself. Finally, the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, generously allowed my friend and colleague Joyce Chaplin and me to bring together a dazzling array of scholars in May 2012 to consider genius for two days in the most congenial of settings.
Antoine Lilti graciously invited me to deliver a series of lectures and spend a month at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in the spring of 2010, whichproved of immense value (at least to me). David Armitage and Peter Gordon arranged for me to speak to an engaging audience at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University; Dan Edelstein and Keith Baker did the same at the French Culture Workshop at Stanford University; and Tony Judt, in the months before his death, had me one last time to the Remarque Institute at New York University to share my thoughts on genius before a stimulating group and to steal a precious moment with him. For much of my professional career, Tony served as a guardian angel and genius bonus . I am grateful to have known him, and I miss him every day.
I am also grateful to Carolina Armenteros for an invitation to deliver a keynote address at Jesus College, Cambridge, amid the Fifth International Colloquium on Joseph de Maistre; to Annie Jourdan for her hospitality and invitation to speak about evil geniuses before the faculty of European Studies at Amsterdam University; to Ivo Cerman for a chance to consider the “religion of genius” at the Historical Institute of the Czech National Academy of Science in Prague; to Hans Stauffacher for the opportunity to speak on “geniology” at the Institut für Religionswissenschaft at the Freie Universität in Berlin; and to Steven Vincent, Tony La Vopa, Malachi Hacohen, and the gracious participants at the Triangle Intellectual History Seminar at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina for an invitation to present a chapter of my work and for their temerity in reading it, much to its improvement. I also delivered papers on the subject of genius at the Western Society for French Historical Studies, the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe,
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