Syracuse’s most despised resident, the arctic temperature, could easily freeze away the hopes of any tourism. But for Anthony Grafton, visiting Syracuse University will be an honor. The university recently appointed Grafton, director of the Davis Center for Historical Studies and professor of history at Princeton University, to the annual Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the humanities.

‘I taught at Cornell before; it shouldn’t be a problem,’ said Grafton.

Grafton’s duties while at SU will include two public lectures, three colloquiums and a workshop on the history of political thought. Grafton’s first public lecture, ‘Magic and Humanism in Early Modern Europe,” will be at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 24 in Maxwell Auditorium.

SU is one in a long line of stops for Grafton. He has taught at Oxford, Cornell, Columbia and Harvard universities and held fellowships at Hebrew University, California Institute of Technology and the University of California at Berkeley. Grafton received both his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago.

‘He is a wonderful lecturer, and we are going to have a lot of fun listening and talking to him,’ history professor Joseph Levine said.

Amidst his research, Grafton has been published in several scholarly works, including the New York Review of Books, the New Republic and the American Scholar. Grafton has written five books. The most recent, ‘Bring Out Your Dead: The Past as Revelation,’ was published in 2002.

While curator of exhibitions at the U.S. Library of Congress and the New York Public Library, Grafton developed two catalogs, ‘New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Recovery’ and ‘Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture.’

The Watson Professorship was established to bring scholars in the humanities to SU. Past recipients of the professorship include such notables as Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis and the distinguished author Toni Morrison.

‘I am looking forward to talking about my research and to meet faculty and student,” Grafton said. I’m really happy to do it.”