MIT History

Faculty

Anne McCants

Professor of History
MacVicar Faculty Fellow
Head, History Faculty

Professor Anne McCants received her A.B. from Mount Holyoke College in in 1984 and her Ph.D. in 1991 from the University of California at Berkeley. She is the recipient of the 1996 Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award, of the 1999 Levitan Prize, of the 2007 Arthur C. Smith Award, and the 1999 Mary Lyon Achievement Award from Mount Hoyoke College. She teaches courses in medieval and early modern Europe, economic history, and women's history. Her research is centered on issues in historical demography, early modern trade and consumption, and the standard of living in pre-industrial Europe. Recent publications include articles in Explorations in Economic History, Family History, Historical Methods, and in the Journal of Economic History. Professor McCants' book, Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1997.

She is currently working on two major research projects. THe first is an investigation into the origins and the socio-economic scope of the consumer revolution in the Dutch Republic. A major part of this project consists of an analysis of nearly one thousand probate inventories drawn up in the second half of the eighteenth century on the properties of low- to middle-income burgers from the city of Amsterdam. The second is a study of the economic aspects of church building in the High Middle Ages. She is especially insterested in the financial arrangments which allowed for the construction of Gothic cathedrals as well as the economic impact of those building projects.

IAP Events:

1. Old Food: Ancient and Medieval Cooking
2. The Distafff Arts: Medieval Clothing Technology

77 Massachusetts Avenue

Building E51-293
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 258-6669
amccants@mit.edu