Sarah Irving

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Assistant Professor of Religion

M05 Dodd Hall
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306
Fax: (850) 644-7225

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Background

Sarah Irving (Ph.D., History, Cambridge University 2007) teaches the history of science and religion in the modern West. She focuses on the history of religion and political thought, the emergence of modern science, and the roles of science and religion in British colonization and empire. Her first book, Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire (Pickering and Chatto: 2008), investigates the way that England’s colonial empire became tied to the redemptive project of restoring man’s original dominion over nature. The book won a Royal Society of Literature and Jerwood Foundation prize for non-fiction.

Dr. Irving is currently researching the intellectual history of British colonization, exploring the relationship between Biblical traditions and natural law in justifying British claims to colonial property. Before joining FSU, Dr. Irving was a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford University.

Research Interests

• History of science and religion
• History of Political Thought
• Man's relationship to nature in Western thought
• The roles of science and religion in British colonization and empire

Selected Publications

• Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire (Pickering and Chatto: London, 2008)
• ‘In a Pure Soil: Anxieties of Empire in the Work of Francis Bacon,’ History of European Ideas, 33 (3) Spring 2006, pp. 249-62.
• ‘An Empire Restored: America and the Royal Society of London, 1660-1700’ in America in the British Imagination, ed. Catherine Armstrong, (Cambridge Scholars Press: Cambridge: 2007).
• ‘Margaret Cavendish’ in Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys and Barbara Caine, Companion to Women’s Historical Writing, (Palgrave Macmillan, London: 2005).
• ‘Women’s Utopian Literature’ in Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys and Barbara Caine, Companion to Women’s Historical Writing, (Palgrave Macmillan, London: 2005)
  

Recent Courses

Summer 2008

• REL5497 ‘Fill the Earth and Subdue it’: Man’s Dominion over Nature in Western Thought

Fall 2008

• REL3936 Religion and Political Thought: Key Thinkers from Martin Luther to Karl Marx

• REL4190/5195 Religion, Science and Empire in the Early Modern Atlantic World

 

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