For anyone who might be interested, the four lectures I gave this spring at the Collège de France, related to my new book project on the Enlightenment, are now online here. The same link will also take you to the Collège lectures given this spring by my friend and colleague Antoine Lilti in his series entitled “Au nom de l’universel: Crises et héritages,” which I can’t recommend highly enough. In fact, the same link will show you all of Antoine Lilti’s lectures since his appointment to the Collège in 2022, including the series “Un monde nouveau: Tahiti et l’Europe des Lumières,” which derive from a book that Flammarion will publish in the fall of 2025. From Lilti’s lectures this year, my favorite was the eighth, in which he discussed the author Julien Benda (1867-1956), best known for his 1927 book
Thanks for sharing all the links and I look forward to viewing your lectures. The question of the NEH is sad but I think the bigger concern is less the support for scholars and writers than for scholarly publishers. In France almost no major works of scholarship or contemporary debate are published by university presses. Here almost all are. The collapse of support for university presses to me seems as big or bigger an issue than the possible zeroing out of the NEH. I also think this conversation about support for public culture can't overlook the impact of the reorientation of the Mellon Foundation away from support for humanities scholarship and publishing.
One point about the College under political pressure. In 1851 Napoleon III barred the teaching of ....the French Rebolution. Laboulaye switched his course to "Comparative Law" and taught in the American Revolution and US Constitution. This in turn contributed directly to his advocacy for the Union in France during the Civil War. The neutrality of France is a significant part of the outcome of the war. So there's that
Thanks for sharing all the links and I look forward to viewing your lectures. The question of the NEH is sad but I think the bigger concern is less the support for scholars and writers than for scholarly publishers. In France almost no major works of scholarship or contemporary debate are published by university presses. Here almost all are. The collapse of support for university presses to me seems as big or bigger an issue than the possible zeroing out of the NEH. I also think this conversation about support for public culture can't overlook the impact of the reorientation of the Mellon Foundation away from support for humanities scholarship and publishing.
One point about the College under political pressure. In 1851 Napoleon III barred the teaching of ....the French Rebolution. Laboulaye switched his course to "Comparative Law" and taught in the American Revolution and US Constitution. This in turn contributed directly to his advocacy for the Union in France during the Civil War. The neutrality of France is a significant part of the outcome of the war. So there's that
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