Edelstein/1
Dan Edelstein
Department of French and
Division of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures (DLCL)Office phone: (650) 724-9881
Stanford UniversityStanford, CA 94305-2010
Academic positions
Assistant Professor of French, Department of French and Italian, Stanford University2004-
Senior NEH Fellow, Department of Romance Languages, University of Chicago2009-2010
Education
University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D. in French2004
Dissertation: “Restoring the Golden Age: Myths in Revolutionary Culture and Ideology”
Université de Genève, Switzerland
Licence ès Lettres (French, English, Latin)1999
Prizes and awards
Oscar Kenshur Book Prize, for The Terror of Natural Right2009
ASECS/The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University
William Koren, Jr. Prize, Honorable Mention for best published article in French history 2009
Society for French Historical Studies
Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, Stanford University2006
Naomi Schor Prize for best graduate student paper presented2003
at Nineteenth-Century French Studies colloquium
Fellowships and grants
Digging Into Data Challenge Grant (NEH/JISC/NSF)2010-2011
For “Digging Into the Enlightenment: Mapping the Republic of Letters”
National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education Fellow, Teagle Foundation 2010-2012
William H. and Frances Green Faculty Fellow2009-2010
NEH Fellowship at a Digital Humanities Center 2009-2010
The ARTFL project, University of Chicago
Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities Grant, Stanford University2008-2011
Hewlett Faculty Grant, Freeman-Spogli Institute, Stanford University2008
Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship2008-09
Humanities Research Network Grant, Stanford Humanities Center2008-09
VPUE Faculty Grant for Undergraduate Research, Stanford University2006/2010
Fulbright Fellowship (at Université Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle) 2002-03
Books and edited volumes
The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2010).
The Super-Enlightenment: Daring To Know Too Much, editor (Oxford: SVEC/Voltaire Foundation,
2010).
The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Myth and Modernity, ed. with Bettina Lerner, Yale French Studies 111 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2007).
Works in progress
The Myth of Revolution [a comparative study of post-1789 Revolutions]
Counter-Mythologies [a study of invented mythologies, from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century]
“To Quote or Not to Quote: Citation Strategies in the Encyclopédie,” with Robert Morrissey.
Articles and book chapters
“Sex and the Heavenly City: Pagan Temptations in Enlightenment and Revolutionary Culture,” in
Subversive Classics, ed. Grant Parker (forthcoming).
“In 1795: Of Gods and Revolution,” in Romantik und Revolution, ed. Klaus Ries (forthcoming).
“Historiographie américaine récente de la Révolution française,” in La République et son droit (1870-
1930), ed. Annie Stora-Lamarre (Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, forthcoming).
“Terreur et droit naturel,” in La République et son droit (forthcoming).
“Introduction to the Super-Enlightenment,” in The Super-Enlightenment, 1-33.
“The Egyptian French Revolution: Freemasonry, Antiquarianism, and the Mythology of Nature,”
in The Super-Enlightenment, 215-41.
“Humanism, l’Esprit Philosophique, and the Encyclopédie,” Republics of Letters 1, no. 1 (May 1, 2009):
“The Birth of Ideology from the Spirit of Myth: Georges Sorel among the Idéologues,” in Joshua Landy and Michael Saler, eds., The Re-enchantement of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
“War and Terror: The Law of Nationsfrom Grotius to the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies
31, no. 2; special issue on “War, Culture, and Society,” ed. David A. Bell and Martha Hanna (2008):
229-62.
“Hostis HumaniGeneris: Devils, Natural Right, Terror, and the French Revolution,” Telos: A Quarterly
Journal of Critical Thought 141 (2007): 57-81.
“The Law of 22 Prairial: Introduction and Translation,” Telos 141(2007): 82-100.
“Editors’ Preface: Mythomanies,” with Bettina Lerner, in Myth and Modernity, 1-4.
“The Modernization of Myth, from Balzac to Sorel,” in Myth and Modernity, 32-44.
“Hyperborean Atlantis: Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Madame Blavatsky, and the Nazi Myth,” ed. Jeffrey S. Ravel
and Linda Zionkowski, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 35 (2006): 267-91.
“Antonin Artaud,” The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, ed. Lawrence Kritzman
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
“Expositions,” in Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought.
“Between Myth and History: Michelet, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, and the Structural Analysis of Myth,”
Clio:A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 32, no. 4 (2004): 1-18.
“Moving Through the Looking-Glass: Deleuzian Reflections on the Series in Mallarmé,”
L’Esprit Créateur 40, no. 3 (2000): 50-60.
News Publications
“How is Innovation Taught? On Liberal Education and the Knowledge Economy,” Liberal Education 96,
no. 1 (2010):
“Third Way in Liberal Education,” Inside Higher Ed (March 30, 2010):
“Gerrymandering the Canon,” Inside Higher Ed (February 16, 2010):
“Only English Spoken,” Inside Higher Ed (October 26, 2009):
“Iphigenia and the iPhone,” Inside Higher Ed (August 13, 2009):
“Republicans Rewrite History in Crying 'Socialism,'” San Jose Mercury News(March 14, 2009):
“Law and Disorder,” in “Thinking Twice: Terror,” Stanford Report (March 4, 2009):
Book Reviews
Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the Spirit of Political Vigilance, and the Foundations of the Modern Republic,
by Paul A. Rahe.
American Historical Review, forthcoming.
A Revolution of the Mind:Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy,by Jonathan Israel.
Journal of Modern History, forthcoming.
Scènes d’aumône: misère et poésie au XIXe siècle,by Anne-Emmanuelle Berger.
French Forum30, no. 3 (2005): 145-147.
Balzac, romancier du regard, by Takao Kashiwagi.
Nineteenth-Century French Studies 33, no. 3-4 (2005): 15-16.
Invited Lectures
“La Terreur et le droit.”March 2011
Institut historique de la Révolution française, Université de Paris-1
“Mythologizing Nature.”November 2010
Department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, University of British Columbia
“How to Think About Revolutions.”October 2010
Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University
“Counter-Mythologies.”October 2010
University Seminar on Early Modern France, Columbia University
“The Myth of Revolution: Reflections on Political Violence.”April 2010
Rethinking European Revolutions, European Studies Council, Yale University
“Citation Strategies in the Encyclopédie” and“Mapping the Republic of Letters.”April 2010
Society for French Historical Studies, Plenary session, Arizona State University
“Terror and Revolution.”February 2010
Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley
“Inventing the Enlightenment.”February 2009
Department of French and Italian, University of Minnesota
“The Super-Enlightenment.”February 2009
Theorizing Early-Modern Studies (TEMS), University of Minnesota
“Was the Enlightenment French After All?”December 2008
Department of History, Johns Hopkins University
“Terreur et droit naturel.”November 2008
Ecole normale supérieure (ENS), Paris
“Historiographie américaine récente sur la Révolution française.”November 2008
La République et son droit (1870-1930), Plenary lecture, Université de Besançon
“The Tyrant and the Outlaw: Inventing the Terror.”May 2007
Modern France Workshop, University of Chicago
“Ideology and the End of the Enlightenment.”November 2004
Department of Romance Languages, Johns Hopkins University
Presentations
“Mapping the Republic of Letters” (with Nicole Coleman).May 2010
Human-Computer Interface Group, Department of Computer Science, Stanford
“From Libertas to Liberté? Fénelon, Rousseau, and the French Revolution.”February 2010
The Politics of Antiquity in the Early Enlightenment, University of Chicago
“Terror Laws: Lessons from the French Revolution.”October 2009
Forum on Contemporary Europe, Stanford University
“Inventing the Enlightenment.”October 2009
Interdisciplinary Colloquium in the Humanities, Stanford University
“In 1795: Of Gods and Revolution.”June 2009
Romantik und Revolution, Historisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
“Naturalizing Philosophy: Myth and Enlightenment.”May 2009
Seminar on Enlightenment and Revolution, Stanford University
“Myth and Nature in the French Enlightenment.”December 2008
Modern Language Association, San Francisco
“La république naturelle des Jacobins.”November 2008
La République et son droit (1870-1930), Université de Besançon
“The Egyptian French Revolution:Freemasonry, Antiquarianism, and the Mythology of Nature.” Oct. 2008
New Paradigms in Revolutionary Studies: French-American Colloquium, South Bend
“Law and Terror: Toward a Theory of Totalitarian Justice.”October 2008
Terrorism and Modernity conference, German Historical Institute/Tulane University
“The Jacobin Republic of Nature.”July 2008
Society for the Study of French History, University of Aberystwyth(UK)
“Two Concepts of Exceptionality: On Political Violence during the French Revolution.”April 2008
Terror and the Making of Modern Europe, Stanford University
“Humanism in the Encyclopédie.”March 2008
Research conference on the Encyclopédie, University of Chicago
“Voltaire’s Republicanism.”March 2008
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Oregon
“Humanist Encyclopedism and l’esprit philosophique.”November 2007
The Republic of Letters: Between Renaissance and Enlightenment, Stanford
“The Case of the Missing Constitution.”October 2007
Western Society for French History, University of Colorado
“Humanities Research and the Future of the Library” (w. Michael A. Keller and Charles Henry)Oct. 2007
Stanford Humanities Center, Stanford University
“Beyond the bornes de l’esprit humain: Traditional Authority and the Super-Enlightenment.”July 2007
International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Montpellier (France)
“Enemies of Humanity: Violence and Natural Right.”July 2007
International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Montpellier
“Natural Right and Total War: On a Liberal Genealogy of the Terror.”December 2006
Modern Language Association, Philadelphia
Commentator for Jessica Riskin, “Mechanical Christs, Hydraulic Brutes and the Invention December 2006
of Consciousness.” Stanford Seminar on Science, Technology, and Society
“The Terror of Natural Right: Droit des gens in Revolutionary France.”October 2006
Western Society for French History, California State University, Long Beach
“Terror and Territory: National Sovereignty and Natural Right.” July 2006
Society for the Study of French History, University of Sussex (UK)
“Off With Their Heads: Death and the Terror.”May 2006
French Culture Workshop, Stanford University
“The Metaphysical Panopticon: The Great Terror and the Festival of the Supreme Being.” April 2006
Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, University of Kentucky
Panel organizer and chair, “The Super-Enlightenment: Pushing the Limits April 2005
of Human Knowledge.”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Nevada
“Restoring the Golden Age: The French Revolution and the Mythical Ideology of Nature.” February 2005
Debartolo Conference, University of South Florida
“The Golden Age of Atlantis: Revolution, Science, and Millenium.”October 2004
Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Washington University
“The Atlantis Theory: Jean-Sylvain Bailly and the Rise of Occult Orientalism.”April 2004
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Boston College
“The Re-invention of Mythology: Court de Gébelin and the Masonic Code.”December 2003
Modern Language Association, San Diego
“Balzac and the Invention of Mythical Modernism. Rewriting Faust in Le Père Goriot.”October 2003
Nineteenth-Century French Studies, University of Arizona
“Filling Saussure’s Shoes: C. S. Peirce and Literary Theory.”April 2002
Twentieth-Century French Studies, University of Connecticut
“Reimagining the Romantic Imagination.” October 2001
Nineteenth-Century French Studies, University of Wisconsin at Madison
“L’Amérique dans la poésie française du vingtième siècle.”April 2001
French Institute of Culture and Technology, University of Pennsylvania
“Against Bricolage as a Theory of Cultural Transmission.” March 2001
Twentieth-Century French Studies, University of California at Davis
“La traversée des mythes dans The Waste Land de T. S. Eliot.”March 1999
Groupe d’études du XXe siècle, Université de Genève
Digital Projects
Mapping the Republic of Letters (Principal Investigator, with Paula Findlen): funded by a three-year Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities grant, and a NEH “Digging Into Data Challenge” grant, this project uses a variety of GIS programs to map the correspondence networks, travel itineraries, imaginary geographies, and book distribution paths of early-modern Europe and America.
Republics of Letters (founder and editor) is an online, peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly journal dedicated to the study of knowledge, politics, and the arts, in their changing historical and cultural configurations; sponsored by the DLCL at Stanford University:
The Super-Enlightenment Project, in collaboration with Stanford University Libraries: a full-text searchablearchive of “illuminist” late-eighteenth-century texts, with scholarly apparatus:
The French Revolutionary Digital Archive, in collaboration with Stanford University Libraries, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, ARTFL, and the Institut d’Histoire de la Révolution française (Paris-Sorbonne I): full-text searchable versions of the Archives parlementaires, other revolutionary archives,
and an image gallery of 14’000 prints: prototype accessible at
Recent Courses
“Inventing the Enlightenment”Spring 2010
FRENLIT 203, Stanford University
“Texts in History: Enlightenment to the Present”Spring 2008
HUMNITIES/FRENGEN163, Stanford University
“Revolutions in Prose: The 19th-Century French Novel”Fall 2007
FRENLIT 204, Stanford University
“Research Seminar on the digitized Encyclopédie”Spring 2006
FRENGEN/HISTORY 345, Stanford University
“Introduction to the Humanities: Epic Journeys, Modern Quests”2004-2010
IHUM 3, Stanford University
“Machiavelli and Sons”Fall 2006
FRENGEN 49N, Freshman Seminar, Stanford University
“The World According to Jean-Jacques: Rousseau, Rousseauism, and the Enlightenment”Spring 2006
FRENLIT 236, Stanford University
“Absolutism, Enlightenment, and Revolution in 17th- and 18th-Century France”Winter 2006
FRENLIT 131, Stanford University
“Killing Romanticism: Nineteenth-Century French Poetry”Winter 2006
FRENGEN 251, Stanford University
“Give me Libertinage or Death: The Politics of Pleasure”Winter 2005
FRENLIT 221, Stanford University
“Theological Poets: Gods, Laws, and Rhythms in European Romanticism”Winter 2005
FRENGEN 248, Stanford University
“Kings and Philosophers: Ruling and Writing in the Age of Enlightement”Fall 2004
FRENGEN 48N, Freshman Seminar, Stanford University
Professional Service and Activities
Co-Director, French Culture Workshop, Stanford University2005-
Executive Committee, Europe Center, Stanford2010-
Executive Committee, France-StanfordCenter2010-
Chair, Travel Award Committee, ASECS2010-11
Co-Director, Seminar and Enlightenment and Revolution, Stanford2007-08
Research Affiliate, Forum on Contemporary European, Freeman-Spogli Institute, Stanford 2006-
Organizer, “French Republicanism” workshop, Stanford2008-10
Organizer, “The Republic of Letters: Between Renaissance and Enlightenment,” StanfordNov. 2007
Planning and Personnel Committee, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages 2006-2007
Steering Committee, Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, Stanford2006-2007
Committee in Charge, Program in Modern Thought and Literature (MTL), Stanford2005-2006
Co-organizer, “Empire Lost: France and Its Other Worlds,” Colloquium, StanfordApril 2006
Sophomore Advisor, Undergraduate Advising Program, Stanford2005-2006
Academic Advisor, Undergraduate Advising Program, Stanford2004-2006
Peer reviewer for the Journal of the History of Ideas (2009), Cornell University Press (2009), Modernism/Modernity (2009), French History (2009, 2010), University of Chicago Press (2008), French Historical Studies (2008, 2010), Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (2005, 2007, 2009), Cincinnati Romance Review (2007),PMLA (2005), Columbia University Press(2005),Clio (2004), and the American Philosophical Society (2004).
Languages
Native speaker of English and French; proficient in German and Italian; reading knowledge of Latin.
Membership in Professional Organizations
Modern Language Association; American Historical Association; American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies; Society for French Historical Studies.