Frank Snowden is Named the Andrew Downey Orrick Professor

Frank M. Snowden, the newly appointed Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of History, is a scholar of Italian history, European social and political history, and the history of medicine.

At Yale, Snowden is also chair of the Program in the History of Science and Medicine. In this interdisciplinary program, he teaches the history of infectious diseases, the history of public health and the intellectual history of medicine.

Snowden’s books include “Violence and Great Estates in the South of Italy: Apulia, 1900-1922,” “The Fascist Revolution in Tuscany, 1919-1922,” “Naples in the Times of Cholera” and “The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962.” The latter was awarded the Gustav Ranis Prize from Yale’s Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies in 2007 for “the best book on an international topic by a member of the Yale faculty.” It also won the American Historical Association’s Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize for the best book on Italy in any period and the 2008 Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine.

Snowden earned his B.A. from Harvard University and his B.Phil. and D.Phil. from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He was an assistant professor of history at Yale from 1975 to 1978, when he became a lecturer in history at Royal Holloway College at the University of London. He was appointed a reader in history there in 1990. One year later, he returned to Yale as a professor of history.

At Yale, Snowden has served as director of undergraduate studies and of graduate studies in the Department of History. He has also served on a number of University committees, including the Committee on Honors and Academic Standing and the Truman Scholarship Selection Committee.

In 2003, Snowden was a resident at the American Academy in Rome. He served as the director of a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Italian fascism in the summer of 2004. He currently serves as deputy chair of the board for the Episcopal Divinity School.

Snowden is a member of the American Historical Association and the American Association for the History of Medicine.