On Dec. 3, 2016 Dr. Andrew Curran, William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities and French Professor at Wesleyan University, gave a lecture entitled, “Denis Diderot, or How to Create an Enlightenment” to an engaged audience of UD faculty, staff, students and the general public.  Outside of France, Denis Diderot is best known as the editor of the famous Encyclopédie, the most emblematic book of the French Enlightenment. In his talk, Professor Curran discussed Diderot’s role in producing this 72,000-article dictionary, a book that was designed to “engender a revolution” in the minds of its readers by castigating “tyrants, oppressors, [religious] fanatics, and the intolerant.”

Earlier in the day, he met with DLLC faculty and students for a special brown-bag lunch session in which he discussed the topic, “Teaching Race in an Early Modern Context.”

Both events were sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the Center for Global and Area Studies/European Studies, and the College of Arts and Sciences.