Prof. John Brewer, Ph.D.

Previous Visiting Fellow

John Brewer is the Eli and Edye Broad Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences as well as Professor of History and Literature at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

His specialist fields include the history and literature of the early modern period along with the history of consumer culture. He is currently working on questions concerning the problematic relationship between art and money. The central assumption in this case is that the art world is dominated by a struggle centered around the value of art, its possession and its meaning. In his investigations, Brewer includes such diverse figures as artists and collectors, experts and counterfeiters, curators and art dealers, who are all involved in different ways in determining the value of art.

John Brewer is visiting Munich as a fellow in June 2010. Here, he will be cooperating with Prof. Dr. Eckhart Hellmuth from the Department of History of the LMU. At the CAS, he will give a lecture on 20 July 2010 on the topic of "Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life: Politics and Method". This lecture is accessible as an electronic publication in the publication series "CAS eSeries" in Edition No. 5.