Articles

“On Being Heard 2.0: The Historical Ear Revisited,” Keynote address at the Sound, Language and the Making of Urban Space Conference, Copenhagen, Denmark (August 24–25, 2023).

“Statistics and Democracy: A Long Story about Trust and Resentment,” Revue de l'euro 56 (2022).

“Are we Really Past Truth? A Historian’s Perspective,” Analyse & Kritik 43, no. 2 (December 2021): 265-283.

“The French Revolution in Cultural History,” in “Forum on the Historiography of the French Revolution,” ed. Jack Censer, Journal of Social History, (November 2018).

“Of Revolutions and the Problem of Choice,” in Rethinking the Age of Revolutions: France and the Birth of the Modern World, eds. David Bell and Yair Mintzer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

 “Introduction: Knowledge,” in The Eighteenth Centuries: An Interdisciplinary Investigation, eds. David T. Gies and Cynthia Wall (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018).

 “Benjamin Rush’s Common Sense,” Early American Studies (special issue “The Republics of Benjamin Rush,” ed. Sari Altschuler and Christopher Bilodeau) 5, no. 2 (Spring 2017).

“On Lying: Writing Philosophical History after the Enlightenment and after Arendt,” in The Worlds of American Intellectual History, eds. Joel Isaac, James Kloppenberg, Michael O’Brien, and Jennifer Ratner-Rosengarten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

 “‘Europe,’ Women, and the American Political Imaginary: The 1790s and the 1990s,” commissioned essay for a special forum on the Republican Court, Journal of the Early Republic 35, no. 2 (Summer 2015).

 “National Revolutions: France,” in The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History, ed. Joseph Miller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).

 “The Social Life of the Senses: A New Approach to 18th-Century Politics and Public Life,” in A Cultural History of the Senses in the Enlightenment, ed. Anne C. Vila (in ‘Cultural History of the Senses’ series, gen. ed. Constance Classen, London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

 “L’Europe des cosmopolites: quand le XVIIIe siècle rencontre le XXIe [Europe of the Cosmopolitans, or When the Eighteenth Century Meets the Twenty-First],” in Penser l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle: commerce, civilization, empire, eds. Antoine Lilti and Céline Spector (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014).

“Humanity and its Common Sense,” in The Concept of Humanity in an Age of Globalization, ed. Zhang Longxi (Goettingen: V&R Unipress, 2012).

“On Being Heard: A Case for Paying Attention to the Historical Ear,” commissioned essay for a forum on “The Senses in History,” with commentary by Martin Jay, The American Historical Review 116 (April 2011).

“Una censura senza censori. Il destino del senso commune nella Francia settecentesca [Censorship without Censors: The Fate of Common Sense in Eighteenth-Century France],” trans. Franco Motta,  in Censura nel secolo dei lumi. Una visione internazionale, ed. Edoardo Tortarolo (Torino: UTET, 2010).

“Thinking About Feeling, 1789-99,” one of six commissioned essays for a special issue on the state of scholarship twenty years after the Revolution’s bicentennial, French Historical Studies 32, no. 4 (Fall 2009).

“Tom Paine’s Common Sense and Ours,” William and Mary Quarterly 65, no. 4 (October 2008).

“Before Democracy: The Production and Uses of Common Sense,” Journal of Modern History 80, no. 1 (March 2008).

 “The Political Uses of Sign Language: The Case of the French Revolution,” Sign Language Studies 6, no. 1 (Fall 2005).

 “Politics, Epistemology, and Revolution,” Intellectual News: Review of the International Society for Intellectual History, no. 11/12 (Summer 2003).

"Citizens of Nowhere in Particular: Cosmopolitanism, Writing, and Political Engagement in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” National Identities (special issue: "The Local Life of Nationhood," eds. Alon Confino and Ajay Skaria) 4, no. 1 (March 2002).

"Writing the History of Censorship in the Age of Enlightenment," in Postmodernism and the Enlightenment: New Perspectives in Eighteenth-Century French Intellectual History, ed. Daniel Gordon (New York and London: Routledge, 2001).

"Les Philosophes and le savoir: Words, Gestures, and Other Signs in the Era of Sedaine," in Michel-Jean Sedaine (1719-1797): Theatre, Opera and Art, eds. David Charlton and Mark Ledbury (Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate Publishing, 2000).

 "Universal Languages and National Consciousness during the French Revolution," in La Recherche dix-huitiémiste. Raison universelle et cultures nationales au dix-huitième siècle, eds. David A. Bell, Stéphane Pujol and Ludmila Pimenova (Paris/Geneva: Honoré Champion and Slatkine, 1999).

 "Deaf Men on Trial: Language and Deviancy in Late Eighteenth-Century France," Eighteenth-Century Life (special issue: "Faces of Monstrosity in Enlightenment Thought") 21, n.s., no. 2 (May 1997).