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2005-2006 Fellows

Keith Baker

Stanford University
Department of History

Keith Baker is the J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Humanities and a professor of history at Stanford University.  He also directs the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. Baker teaches on the enlightenment and modern Europe.  Most recently, Baker edited What's Left of Enlightenment? A Postmodern Question, (Stanford University Press), with Peter Hanns Reill. 

Project Summary

Baker’s book project, The Political Languages of the French Revolution refines his claim that the French Revolution served as a critical moment of linguistic transformation where the discourse of the will trumped that of reason and justice, leading to the post-revolutionary period of the Terror.   His work should contribute to the ongoing methodological debates among historians and scholars in other disciplines about ways of understanding the relationship between language and social action.