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Sylvana Tomaselli

Quondam Fellow

Sylvana Tomaselli became a Quondam Fellow in 2005. She was a Fellow of Hughes Hall from 1997 to 2002, during which she was Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences (1999-2002) as well as a Tutor (2001-2002).

An historian of political theory and Affiliated Lecturer in the History and Human, Social and Political Science Faculties, she is a Fellow of St John’s College, where she is Director of Studies in History Part I and Human, Social and Political Science, Tutor to the Natural Scientists (Physical), and Deputy Tutor to the Postgraduates.

She read philosophy at the University of British Columbia before coming to King’s College, Cambridge as a graduate student having completed an M.A. in Social and Political Thought at York University, Ontario. She has taught and worked at Cambridge ever since. Her research interests include the Enlightenment, the history of political thought in the very long eighteenth-century, grand historical narratives, the history of, and issues, in feminism, modern and contemporary political thought and political philosophy. She teaches the history of political thought from Plato to the present. Her postgraduate students have written on a variety of authors and subjects, including John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Major Cartwright, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Flora Tristan, J.S. Mill, Tocqueville, and Simone de Beauvoir.

Her publications include:

  • Sylvana Tomaselli (2021): The art of being in the eighteenth century: Adam Smith on fortune, luck, and trust, History of European Ideas, DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2021.1950313 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2021.1950313
  • Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion, and Politics, Princeton University Press, 2021.
  • ‘The Philosophes’, in Mary Wollstonecraft in Context, ed. Nancy E. Johnson and Paul Keen, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
  • ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Men’, in The Wollstonecraftian Mind, Sandrine Bergès, Eileen Hunt Botting, and Alan Coffee eds., Routledge, 2019.’
  • ‘Peace, Gender, and War’ in A Cultural History of Peace in the Enlightenment (1648 – 1815) Stella Ghervas & David Armitage (eds.) Bloomsbury, 2020.
  • “‘Have ye not heard that we cannot serve two masters?’ The Platonism of Mary Wollstonecraft’”, in Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, Douglas Hedley and David Leech (eds.), Springer, 2019 ISSN 0066-6610 ISSN 2215-0307 (electronic) International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées ISBN 978-3-030-22199-7 ISBN 978-3-030-22200-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-
  • ‘Reflections on Inequality, respect and love in the political writings of Mary Wollstonecraft’, in The Social and Political Thought of Mary Wollstonecraft, Sandrine Berge and Alan Coffee (Eds.), Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 14-33. ISBN 978-0-19-876684-1
  • ‘On labelling Raynal’s Histoire: reflections on its genre and subject’, in Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes, Colonialism, Networks and Global Exchange, Cecil Courtney and Jenny Mander (eds.), special volume in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2015 with the Oxford Studies on the Enlightenment (Voltaire Foundation, 2015) pp. 73-87. ISBN: 978 0 7294 1169 1.
  • ‘Mary Wollstonecraft: The reunification of domestic and political spheres’ in Geschlechterordnung und Staat. Legitimationsfiguren der politischen Philosophie (1600-1850), Marion Heinz and Sabine Doyé (eds.), Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Beiheft, 2012.
  • ‘Montesquieu’s L’Esprit des Lois from a Contemporary Feminist Point of View’, in Montesquieu zwischen den Disziplinen. Einzel- und kulturwissenschaftliche Zugriffe, Edgar Mass, Günther Lottes, Annett Volmer, Jens Haeseler (Hrsg.), Internationale Konferenz aus Anlass des 250. Todesjahres von Charles-Louis de Montesquieu am Forschungszentrum Europaeische Aufklaerung (Potsdam) , Beiträge zur Politischen Wissenschaft, Band 161, Dunker and Humblot, Berlin, 2010.
  • ‘Rousseau juge de Locke or Reading Some Thoughts on Education after Ēmile’ in Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries, and Legacy in Honour of G.A.J. Rogers, edited by Sarah Hutton and Paul Schuurman, Dordrecht: Springer, 2008. ISBN: 978-1-4020-8324-2 e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-8325-9.
  • `The Spirit of Nations’, in Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • `Civilization, Patriotism and the Quest for Origins’, in Enlightenment and Feminism, Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (eds.)  Palgrave, 2005 (Pb. 2007)
  • ‘The Enlightenment Debate on Women’ (reprint of 1985), in The Enlightenment, Dena Goodman and Kathleen Wellman (eds.), Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
  • ‘The Enlightenment Debate on Women’ (reprint of 1985), in The Enlightenment: A Sourcebook and Reader, Paul Hyland with Olga Gomez and Francesca Greensides (eds.), Routledge, 2003.
  • `The Role of Woman in Enlightenment Conjectural Histories’, in Conceptualizing Women in Enlightenment Thought. Penser la femme au siècle des Lumières, Hans Erich Bödeker and Leiselotte Steinbrügge, Berlin – Verlag Arno Spitz GmbH, 2001.
  • `The Most Public Sphere of All: The Family’, in Women and the Public Sphere: Writing and Representation, 1700-1830, Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Cliona O. Gallchoir and Penny Warburton (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  • `Intolerance, the Virtue of Princes and Radicals’, in Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, Ole Grell and Roy Porter (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  • `The Death and Rebirth of Character in the Eighteenth Century’, in Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present, Roy Porter (ed.), Routledge, 1996.
  • `Political Economy: The Desires and Needs of Present and Future Generations’, in Inventing Human Science, Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (eds.), The University of California Press, 1995.
  • `Reflections on the History of the Science of Woman’, in A Question of Identity, Marina Benjamin (ed.), Rutgers University Press, 1993; (reprinted from History of Science, xxix (June 1991) 185-205, as listed below.)
  • `Moral Philosophy and Population Questions in Eighteenth-Century Europe’, in Population, Resources and Environment, M. S. Teitelbaum and J. M. Winter (eds.), special supplement to Population and Development Review (1988) and Cambridge University Press (1989).
  • The Enlightenment Debate on Women, History Workshop Journal, 20, (Autumn 1985), 101-24 (Reprinted in 2003 and 2004, see above, Chapters of Books).
  • ‘Law and Commerce in 1608’ in Law Society: Which is to be Master? The Rt Hon Sir Richard Aikens, Kenneth Richardson, eds., Wildy, Simmonds and Hill Publishing, London, 2011.