Claire Goldstein
Professor of French and Director of the Humanities Program at UC Davis, author and scholar of ancien régime French literature and culture, and author of In the Sun King's Cosmos.
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Mar 24, 2026 • 39min
Claire Goldstein, "Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)
Claire Goldstein, Professor of French and humanities scholar at UC Davis, studies seventeenth-century French literature and material culture. She traces how comets sparked social panic, periodical news-making, court spectacle, and ballets. The conversation highlights archival sleuthing, theater and publication networks, and how comet mania shaped the rise of state science and the Paris Observatory.
