About the Chair

The Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North focuses on the history and cultures of North America, Europe, Russia, and East Asia using the immense foreign language collections in the specialized reading rooms of the Library of Congress.

One of five Kluge Chairs articulated in the founding documents of The John W. Kluge Center, the Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North is occupied by scholars of great accomplishment chosen for their intellectual and communicative abilities. While in residence they are free to pursue their own research in the Library's collections.

Together, these broadly defined Chairs bring a critical mass of the world's leading thinkers to Washington from all over America and the world. Their presence provides an opportunity for ongoing dialogue with political leaders on matters of importance to civic and political life.

Find more information on Kluge Chairs in the Kluge Center charter.

Most Recent Chair

Anthony Grafton

Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North (2025)

Anthony Grafton has been appointed as the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North. Grafton taught European history at Princeton University from 1975 to 2025. He studied history, classics, and history of science at the University of Chicago, where he was taught by Hanna Holborn Gray, Eric Cochrane, and Noel Swerdlow, and University College London, where he worked with Arnaldo Momigliano and Carlotta Dionisotti. His special interests include the history of scholarship, science and other forms of knowledge-making, the history of books and readers and the history of higher education. His books include “Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship” (Oxford, 1983-93); “Defenders of the Text” (Harvard, 1991); “The Footnote: A Curious History” (Harvard, 1997); and “Magus: The Art of Magic from Faust to Agrippa” (Harvard, 2023).

At the Kluge Center, Grafton is researching a conjectural history of the use of conjecture in European historiography.

View past chairs