| 1 | Name: | Dr. Thomas W. Laqueur | |
| Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | ||
| Year Elected: | 2015 | ||
| Class: | 3. Social Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 303. History Since 1715 | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1945 | ||
Thomas Laqueur is arguably one of the most important cultural historians of his generation, worldwide. A trustee of the National Humanities Center and a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian, his works have been translated into at least fifteen languages. Spanning two millennia of human experience his research and writing treats a remarkable range of topics and sub-fields in the history of western civilization - from literacy, education and popular politics to the scientific understanding of sex-differentiation, the origins of human rights and the cultural meanings of death. As a founding member of the editorial board of the journal Representations, he was a co-creator of what came to be called "the new cultural history" - whose hallmark is the deployment of literary and anthropological approaches to the study of major transformations in our understanding of fundamental elements of human experience, elements that had previously been viewed as beyond the scope and reach of historical investigation. | |||