SCAS News - 15 September, 2014
Book on Carl Peter Thunberg has been Published by SCAS
On Tuesday, 9 September, the book Carl Peter Thunberg, Botanist and Physician: Career-Building across
the Oceans in the Eighteenth Century, written by former SCAS Fellow Marie-Christine Skuncke, was launched
during a reception at the Collegium.The book is the first book ever to be published by the Swedish Collegium
for Advanced Study. It is published with
generous support from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ; the Swedish
Foundation for Humanities and Social
Sciences).
Marie-Christine Skuncke is Professor of Literature at Uppsala University. She has had a long and close
affiliation
with SCAS, and has been both a regular Fellow and a Non-resident Long-term
Fellow for Programmes
in
Eighteenth-Century Studies and Cultural and Literary History.
Skuncke's research on the Swedish botanist and
physician Carl Peter
Thunberg, a pupil
of Linnaeus, was to a
great
extent conducted as she spent time in residence at the Collegium, and a large part of the book was thus
written in the historical environment that Linneanum provides. Linneanum,
now the home of SCAS, was founded
by
the Swedish king Gustav III
on Thunberg’s
initiative as a monument
to science and enlightenment, and
Thunberg himself lived and worked here for many years.
Marie-Christine Skuncke has previously published extensively on eighteenth-century Sweden in a
European
perspective, with a
particular focus
on theatre and
opera, the education of Gustav III, political rhetoric, and
media
history. Her
research on Thunberg
has turned her attention to
relations with Asia and Africa.
