Marcy Norton
Title — Associate Professor of History
Address — 801 22nd St. NW #309, Washington D.C. 20052
Office — 801 22nd St. NW #309
Phone — (202) 994-3504
E-mail — mnorton@gwu.edu
Areas of Expertise —
Marcy Norton writes on the cultural history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe and its American colonies. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World sheds fresh light on the encounter between the New World and the Old World by explaining how these American Indian goods became European commodities of mass consumption. Professor Norton has held fellowships from the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress and the Davis Center of Princeton University, among others. She is currently researching cultural relativism in the seventeenth century and human-animal relationships from Columbus to Darwin. (Complete C.V.)
Education
Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, 2000.
Publications
Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.
"Imperial Rivalries and Commercial Collaboration: Portuguese and English Merchants and the Formation of an Atlantic Tobacco Trade, 1560-1640." In The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624, ed. Fredrika Teute, 251-273. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute, 2007. Co-authored with Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert.
"Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics." The American Historical Review 111 (June 2006): 660-691. Translated in Revista de Estudios Sociales 29 (April 2008): 42-69.
Classes Taught
Hist 39: European Civilization in its World Context to 1715
Hist 101: New World Encounters between Europeans and Indians
Hist 101W: Society and Culture in Early Modern Europe
Hist 101W: People and Animals from Columbus to Darwin
Hist 149: Spain and its Empire, 1492-1715
Hist 201: History and Historians-Approaches and Methodology
Hist 239: Early Modern European Colloquium
Hist 297: Atlantic World, 1500-1800
Hist 297: Body and Society in Early Modern Europe