Sean Cocco is associate professor of history at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Watching Vesuvius explores the question of Vesuvius as an object of study in the early modern science of volcanism from the investigations and opinions of humanists and naturalists in the late Renaissance to the early eighteenth-century philosophizing on volcanoes and the development of geology later in the century. Around this history of science, Sean Cocco weaves a deep cultural history of the relationship between nature and culture in the theories and practices of the peoples in the city of Naples. (John A. Marino, University of California, San Diego)