Award-winning historian and professor Andrew S. Curran, author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely, will discuss the life and work of the Enlightenment philosopher and consummate atheist Denis Diderot on the occasion of his 307th birthday. Offering insight into the ways Diderot’s teachings might be ruminated on in current times, Curran will highlight why this 18th-century thinker is more relevant than ever.
Andrew S. Curran is the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University. The author of two previous books, Sublime Disorder: Physical Monstrosity in Diderot’s Universe and The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment, Curran is a Fellow in the history of medicine at the New York Academy of Medicine and a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.