School of History, Philosophy and Religion

Lisa Sarasohn specializes in Early Modern Intellectual History and the History of Science. 

Background

Sarasohn went to UCLA for graduate school intending to study medieval and English history. She received her Ph.D. in European intellectual and cultural history. Her dissertation was on the 17th-century French philosopher Pierre Gassendi. In 1982-83, she was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. Sarasohn's interests have increasingly centered on the History of Science. She has published articles on Galileo Galilei, Thomas Hobbes, and Margaret Cavendish, and her book on Cavendish's natural philosophy will be published in Spring 2010.  Her current project is a cultural history of vermin.  Not least, she loves to teach.

Select Publications

Books

	God and Nature in the Thought of Margaret Cavendish Edited by Brandie R. Siegfried, Brigham Young University, USA and Lisa T. Sarasohn, Oregon State University, USA (Ashgate Press, 2014)
The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish: Reason and Fancy in the Scientific Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
	Gassendi’s Ethics: Freedom in a Mechanistic Universe (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996).

Select Journal Articles

• “Who was then the Gentleman? Samuel Sorbière, Thomas Hobbes, and the Royal Society?” in History of Science 42 (2004), 1-22.
• “Leviathan and the Lady: Cavendish’s Critique of Hobbes in the Philosophical Letters,” in Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish, ed. Line Cottegnies and Nancy Weitz (Madison and Teaneck: Farleigh Dickenson Press, 2003; London: Associated Universities Presses, 2003), 40-58.
• “Was Leviathan a Patronage Artifact?” in History of Political Thought 21 (2000), 606-29.
• “Thomas Hobbes and the Duke of Newcastle: A Study in the Mutuality of Patronage,” in Isis 90 (1999), 715-37.