# Joyce Chaplin James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History ![Joyce Chaplin ](/sites/g/files/omnuum9471/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/chaplin.jpeg?itok=zyCU9hsS) email laptop\_windows [University Website](https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/joyce-chaplin) laptop\_windows [Personal Website](https://scholar.harvard.edu/joycechaplin/home) - Region(s): America; Europe - Time Period(s): 16th century; 17th century; 18th century; 19th century - Theme(s): Early American History: histories of science, climate, colonialism, and environment Joyce E. Chaplin, BA (Northwestern), MA (Johns Hopkins), PhD (Johns Hopkins), is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History in the [Department of History](http://history.fas.harvard.edu/) at Harvard University, where she teaches the histories of science, climate, colonialism, and environment. She is also an Affiliated Faculty Member in Harvard’s [Department of the History of Science](https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/), an affiliate of the [Department of Landscape Architecture](https://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/Department%20of%20Landscape%20Architecture) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a Faculty Member of Harvard’s [American Studies Program](http://americanstudies.fas.harvard.edu/), and a Faculty Associate of the [Harvard University Center for the Environment](http://environment.harvard.edu/) where she is a convener of the [Harvard Environmental History Working Group](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/envihist/home). She serves on the Faculty Executive Board of the [Harvard Museums of Science and Culture](https://hmsc.harvard.edu/) and is a Trustee of the [Massachusetts Historical Society](https://www.masshist.org/), the first historical society in the United States (1791). A former Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom, she has taught at six different institutions on two continents, an island, and a peninsula, and in a maritime studies program on the [Atlantic Ocean.](https://www.sea.edu/ships_crew/cramer) An award-winning author, Professor Chaplin’s major works include [*An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815*](https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807846131/an-anxious-pursuit/) (1993), [*Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676*](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674011229) (2001), [*The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius*](https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/joyce-chaplin/the-first-scientific-american/9780465008858/) (2006), [*Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit*](http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Round-About-the-Earth/Joyce-E-Chaplin/9781416596202) (2012), and (coauthored), [*The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus: Rereading the* Principle of Population](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10747.html) (2016). She is the editor of [*Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: A Norton Critical Edition*](http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=22632) (2012) and [*An Essay on the Principle of Population: A Norton Critical Edition*](http://books.wwnorton.com/books/webad.aspx?id=22632) (2017), and is a coeditor of two essay collections, [*Food in Time and Place*](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520283589/food-in-time-and-place) (2014) and [*Genealogies of Genius*](https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137497659) (2016). Her work has been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Estonian, and, forthcoming, into Turkish and Chinese. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the *Times Literary Supplement*, the *New York Times Book Review*, the *London Review of Books*, the *Wall Street Journal* and *Aeon*. She is currently working on a history of resource conservation, climate change, and settler colonialism, “The Franklin Stove: Heat and Life in the Little Ice Age,” for which she received a 2018 [Guggenheim Fellowship](https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/joyce-e-chaplin/). She tweets [@JoyceChaplin1](https://twitter.com/JoyceChaplin1?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) - ## People: Department Search [History](/people-department-search/history) - ## People: Filtered Search [Faculty](/people-filtered-search/faculty) - ## People: Theme Search [Colonialism](/people-theme-search/colonialism) [Cultural History](/people-theme-search/cultural-history) [History of Science](/people-theme-search/history-science) - ## People: Region Search [Europe](/people-region-search/europe) [United States](/people-region-search/united-states) - ## People: Time Period Search [16th Century](/people-time-period-search/16th-century) [17th Century](/people-time-period-search/17th-century) [18th Century](/people-time-period-search/18th-century)