Mi Gyung Kim
Associate Professor
B.A. Seoul National University, S. Korea
M.A. University of Texas, Austin
Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles
278 Withers Hall
Phone: 919-513-2235
Email: mimi_kim@ncsu.edu
Dr. Kim is on leave 2009-2010
Teaching Interests
History of European Science, French Enlightenment, Women in French Enlightenment, Science in Public Culture, 18th and 19th C.
Research Interests
My research path during the past two decades has covered European history of chemistry from late 17th to late 19th century, part of which has been published as Affinity, That Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution (MIT Press, 2003). By taking a close look at the practical and institutional evolution of eighteenth-century French chemistry, I present a much more complicated genealogy of the Chemical Revolution which is often regarded as the foundational moment for chemistry and modern laboratory sciences. This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Currently, I’m working on two book projects that explore the place of science in French Enlightenment. The Aerial Theater: Balloons and the Public in Pre-Revolutionary France (supported by the National Humanities Center) deals with the creation of a mass public for science with the invention of the hot-air balloon in 1783. As a ‘sublime’ spectacle that drew a crowd of 200,000 to 400,000, the balloon ascension fundamentally transformed the meaning of the ‘public’ and introduced a new agency in the contemporary political scene. Patriotic Enlightenment: The Science of Man and Civic Ideology at the Dijon Academy (supported by the American Philosophical Society and the Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris) is aimed at configuring a broad intellectual foundation for the French Enlightenment by linking it to the judicial and academic culture in the province.
