Edelstein/1
Dan Edelstein
Department of French and ItalianStanford, CA 94305-2010
Stanford UniversityOffice telephone: (650) 724-9881
Current Position
Assistant Professor of French, Department of French and Italian, Stanford University2004-
Education
University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D. in FrenchMay 2004
Dissertation: “Restoring the Golden Age: Myths in Revolutionary Culture and Ideology”
Université de Genève
Licence ès Lettres (French, English, Latin)July 1999
Prizes and Awards
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
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at a Digital Humanities Center 2009
The ARTFL project, University of Chicago
Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities Grant, Stanford University2008-2011
Hewlett Faculty Grant, Freeman Spogli Insitute, Stanford University2008
Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship2008-9
Humanities Research Network Grant, Stanford Humanities Center2008-09
VPUE Faculty Grant for Undergraduate Research, Stanford University2006-07
Fulbright Fellowship (at Université Paris III) 2002-03
Books and Edited Volumes
The Enlightenment and France (work in progress).
Republicanism in Eighteenth-Century France, with Keith Baker, Andrew Jainchill, James Swenson,
and Kent Wright (work in progress).
The Super-Enlightenment: Daring To Know Too Much, editor (Oxford: SVEC/Voltaire Foundation,
forthcoming 2010).
The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism in Eighteenth-Century France, 1699-1794
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2009).
Myth and Modernity, ed. with Bettina Lerner, Yale French Studies 111 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2007).
Articles
“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).
“Humanism, l’Esprit Philosophique, and the Encyclopédie,” Republics of Letters 1, no. 1 (forthcoming).
“Introduction to the Super-Enlightenment,” in The Super-Enlightenment (forthcoming).
“The Egyptian French Revolution: Freemasonry, Antiquarianism, and the Mythology of Nature,”
in The Super-Enlightenment (forthcoming).
“Law and Disorder,” in “Thinking Twice: Terror,” Stanford Report (March 4, 2009):
“War and Terror: The Law of Nationsfrom Grotius to the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies
31.2; issue on “War, Culture, and Society,” ed. David A. Bell and Martha Hanna (2008): 229-62.
“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, forthcoming 2008).
“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 32.4 (2004): 1-18.
“Moving Through the Looking-Glass: Deleuzian Reflections on the Series in Mallarmé,”
L’Esprit Créateur 40.3 (2000): 50-60.
Book Reviews
Terror and Its Discontents: Suspect Words in the French Revolution by Caroline Weber.
French Forum (forthcoming).
Scènes d’aumône: misère et poésie au XIXe siècle by Anne-Emmanuelle Berger.
French Forum,30.3 (2005): 145-147.
Balzac, romancier du regard by Takao Kashiwagi.
Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 33.3-4 (2005): 15-16.
Invited Lectures
“In 1795: Of Gods and Revolution.”June 2009
Historisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
“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
Department of History, Université de Besançon, France
“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
“Ancients, Moderns, and the Branding of the Enlightenment.”May 2009
North-American Society for 17th-Century French Literature (NASSCFL), NYU
“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
“A Modern Script for Revolutionary Terror.”October 2008
Terrorism and Modernity: Global Perspectives on Political Violence
in the Nineteenth Century, 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 University
“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 (primary investigator, with Paula Findlen): funded by a three-year Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities grant, this project will use 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 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 (to be launched in early 2009).
The Super-Enlightenment Project, in collaboration with Stanford University Libraries: a full-text searchablearchive of “illuminist” late-eighteenth-century texts, with scholarly apparatus (forthcoming 2009).
The French Revolutionary Digital Archive, in collaboration with Stanford University Libraries, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Institut d’Histoire de la Révolution française (Paris-Sorbonne I): full-text searchable versions of the Archives parlementaires,the Moniteur universel, the Baudouin collection of revolutionary legislation and an image gallery of 14’000 prints (forthcoming).
Recent Courses
“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”2004-2008
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-
Co-Director, Seminar and Enlightenment and Revolution, Stanford2007-
Research Affiliate, Forum on Contemporary European, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford 2006-
Affiliated Faculty, Mediterranean Studies Forum, Stanford2005-
Organizer, “French Republicanism” workshop, Stanford University2008
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
Publicist, Department of French and Italian, Stanford2005-
Graduate Recruitment Committee, Department of French and Italian, Stanford2004-
Curriculum Committee, Department of French and Italian, Stanford2004-2006
Academic Advisor, Undergraduate Advising Program, Stanford2004-2006
Co-organizer, Poetry, Poetology and Poetics Research Group, DLCL, Stanford2004-2005
Screener, Stanford Humanities Center Fellowships, Stanford2004-
Interviewer, Franco-American Fulbright Commission2003
Peer reviewer for the University of Chicago Press (2008), French Historical Studies (2008), Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (2005, 2007), Cincinnati Romance Review (2007),PMLA (2005), Columbia University Press(2005),Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History (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 Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies; Society for French Historical Studies.