Paul Cheney is Professor of European History at the University of Chicago, the host institution for this Summer Seminar. He has also taught at Columbia University, Queen’s University of Belfast and has held visiting positions in France, Germany, and China. He is a specialist in the social and political thought of the Enlightenment and is the author of two scholarly monographs: Revolutionary Commerce: Globalization and the French Monarchy (2010) and Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue (2017). His articles appear in Past & Present, The William and Mary Quarterly, Dix-huitième siècle and The Radical History Review and elsewhere. In addition to his specialty in French history, he has published on the Scottish Enlightenment.

Alexander Schmidt is Reader in Intellectual History at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. He has held fellowships at the University of Edinburgh, King’s College, Cambridge, Sichuan University, Chengdu and The John U Nef Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago (2015-16). He has also taught on Enlightenment politicalthought at Sichuan University in July 2016. He has published widely on eighteenth century political thought and intellectual history. His articles have appeared in The Historical Journal, Modern Intellectual History, History of Political Thought and elsewhere. From 2010 to 2012 Schmidt collaborated with the late Istvan Hont, Eva Piirimäe and other scholars on a project on the eighteenth-century sociability debate. Recently, he has edited together, with Keith Tribe, Friedrich Schiller’s On the Aesthetic Education of Man for Penguin Classics (2016).