Dan Edelstein works primarily on eighteenth-century France, which also serves as a convenient launching pad for raids into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the early modern period. His first book, The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), examines how liberal natural right theories, classical republicanism, and the myth of the golden age became fused in eighteenth-century political culture, only to emerge as a violent ideology during the Terror. He recently finished a short book entitled The Genesis of the Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), which explores how the idea of an Enlightenment emerged in French academic circles around the 1720's. He is currently working on the concept of "counter-mythologies" both during the Enlightenment and in the aftermath of the French Revolution. He has co-edited a special issue of Yale French Studies on Myth and Modernity, and is the editor of a forthcoming issue of Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (SVEC) dedicated to "The Super-Enlightenment." He also partnered with Stanford Libraries to produce a companion digital archive for this project. His published articles concern such topics as the Encyclopédie, antiquarianism, Orientalism, natural right, the French Revolution, the Idéologues, political mythology, and structuralism, as well as writers including Balzac, Roland Barthes, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Hugo Grotius, Michelet, Mallarmé, Georges Sorel, and Voltaire.

At Stanford, Edelstein teaches courses on the literature, philosophy, culture, and politics of the Enlightenment; nineteenth-century novels and poetry; the French Revolution; and early-modern political thought. He regularly teaches the IHUM "Epic Journeys, Modern Quests" track, as well as freshman seminars. In 2006, he received the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, the university's highest teaching honor.

With J.P. Daughton, Edelstein co-directs the French Culture Workshop at the Stanford Humanities Center, and with Paula Findlen, is a principal investigator for a project called "Mapping the Republic of Letters," which received a three-year Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities grant. He is a founding editor of Republics of Letters, where he also contributes to the Editors' blog. 

In July-September 2009 and January-March 2010, he will hold a NEH Fellowship at a Digital Humanities Center, namely the ARTFL project at the University of Chicago.

Education

2004: Ph.D. in French, University of Pennsylvania
2000: M.A. in French, University of Pennsylvania
1999: Licence ès lettres (French, English, Latin), Université de Genève
1993: Maturité scientifique, Collège Calvin, Geneva

Selected publications

The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

The Super-Enlightenment: Daring to Know Too Much, editor (Oxford: SVEC/Voltaire Foundation, forthcoming [Jan. 2010]).

“Humanism, l'Esprit Philosophique, and the Encyclopédie,” Republics of Letters 1 (2009): http://rofl.stanford.edu/node/27. 

“The Birth of Ideology from the Spirit of Myth: Georges Sorel among the Idéologues,” in The Re-enchantement of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age, ed. Joshua Landy and Michael Saler (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

“War and Terror: The Law of Nations from Grotius to the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 31.2, Special Issue on “War, Culture, and Society,” ed. David A. Bell and Martha Hanna (2008): 229-62.

“Hostis Humani Generis: 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.

Myth and Modernity, editor with Bettina Lerner, Special Issue of Yale French Studies 111 (2007).

“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” and “Expositions,” in The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought, ed. Lawrence Kritzman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

“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.

News publications

“How is Innovation Taught? On the Humanities and the Knowledge Economy,” Liberal Education (forthcoming).

“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).

Recent and upcoming presentations

“The Myth of Revolution: Reflections on Political Violence,” Rethinking European Revolutions, European Studies Council, Yale University (April 2010)

“Mapping the Republic of Letters,” Society for French Historical Studies Conference, Arizona State University (April 2010)

“The Terror of Natural Right,” University of California, Berkeley (November 2009)

“Inventing the Enlightenment,” Interdisciplinary Colloquium in the Humanities, Stanford University (October 2009)

“Terror Laws: Lessons from the French Revolution,” Forum on Contemporary Europe, Stanford University (October 2009)

“In 1795: Of Gods and Revolution,” Historisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena (June 2009)

“Inventing the Enlightenment,” Department of French and Italian, University of Minnesota (February 2009) 

“The Super-Enlightenment,” Theorizing Early-Modern Studies (TEMS), University of Minnesota (February 2009)

“Myth and Nature in the French Enlightenment,” MLA, San Francisco (December 2008)

“Was the Enlightenment French After All?,” Department of History, Johns Hopkins University (December 2008)

“Terreur et droit naturel,” Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), Paris (November 2008)

“La république naturelle des Jacobins,” La République et son droit (1870-1930), Université de Besançon (Novemember 2008)

“The Egyptian French Revolution: Freemasonry, Antiquarianism, and the Mythology of Nature,” New Paradigms in Revolutionary Studies: French-American Colloquium, South Bend (October 2008)

“Law and Terror: Towards a Theory of Totalitarian Justice,” Terrorism and Modernity: Global Perspectives on Political Violence in the Nineteenth Century; Tulane University (October 2008)

“Two Concepts of Exceptionality: On Political Violence during the French Revolution,” Terror and the Making of Modern Europe, Stanford University (April 2008)

Selected awards and fellowships

National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education, the Teagle Foundation, 2010-12

William H. and Frances Green Faculty Fellow, Stanford University, 2009-10

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at a Digital Humanities Center, the ARTFL project, University of Chicago, 2009

William Koren, Jr. Prize, Honorable Mention for best published article in French history, Society for French Historical Studies, 2009 

Presidential Fund for Innovation in the Humanities Grant, Stanford University, 2008-2011

Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, Stanford University, 2006