Professor of Italian; affiliate professor of history, art history, International and Area Studies, performing arts, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Professor Messbarger’s major research interests center on Italian Enlightenment culture, in particular the place and purpose of women in civic, academic and social life, and the intersection of art and science in the production of anatomical wax models during the age.
Her research centers on the Italian Enlightenment, in particular the intersection of anatomy and art, and medicine and religion, and the shifting roles of women in civic and academic life during the age.
Her most recent monograph, “The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini” (U of Chicago Press, 2010) traced the remarkable life of the 18th-century Bolognese woman from provincial artist to internationally renowned anatomist and anatomical modeler for the University of Bologna’s famous medical school. She is the author of numerous articles, including “The Re-birth of Venus in Florence’s Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History,” in theOxford Journal of the History of Collections, winner of both the James L. Clifford Prize and the Percy Adam’s Prize for the best article in 2012-13. Most recently, she co-edited with Christopher Johns and Phil Gavitt the volume“Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, ScienceandSpirituality” (U of Toronto Press, 2016).
She has received fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Philosophical Society, and Washington University’s Center for the Humanities, and is a faculty scholar at Washington University’s Institute for Public Health.
It’s a grim milestone. More than 1 million Americans have died due to COVID-19. In this video, Rebecca Messbarger, director of medical humanities in Arts & Sciences, discusses “Requiem of Light,” a citywide memorial that she conceived and organized for the thousands of St. Louisans lost to the pandemic.
Forest Park will host “Requiem of Light: Memorial for Saint Louisans Lost to COVID-19″ on Oct. 2. Conceived and organized by Rebecca Messbarger in Arts & Sciences, the memorial will feature music, community testimonials and words of condolence from interfaith leaders, culminating with the lighting of 1,500 lanterns around the Grand Basin.
Rebecca Messbarger, professor of Italian and founding director of the Medical Humanities program in Arts & Sciences, speaks on social distancing from medieval Florence to Progressive Era St. Louis.
The history of medicine is “embedded in the DNA of contemporary medical science and medical practice,” said Rebecca Messbarger, director of medical humanities in Arts & Sciences. In this video, Messbarger discusses the importance of medical humanities as well as her own research into the life and work of Anna Morandi Manzolini, one of the most important anatomists of the European Enlightenment.
In this Q&A, program founders Rebecca Messbarger and Corinna Treitel discuss the new minor in medical humanities, the development of the field and the relationship between the arts and sciences.
