James Schmidt
 University Professor; Professor of History and Political Science, College of Arts and Sciences.
B.A., Rutgers University;
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Professor Schmidt specializes in the history of European political and social thought from the eighteenth century to the present. He is the author of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (1985) and the editor of What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (1996). He has a particular interest in debates over the nature, the limits, and the legacy of the Enlightenment and has published a series of articles in such journals as The Journal of History of Ideas, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Political Theory, History of Political Thought, American Political Science Review, Social Research, and Philosophy & Literature, exploring the ways in which eighteenth-century thinkers understood the notion of "enlightenment" and the ways in which the Enlightenment has been approached by such twentieth-century thinkers as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Jurgen habermas, and Michel Foucault. He has received a number of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and, in 1999, was awarded the James L. Clifford Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.
He has taught a wide range of courses in the areas of intellectual history and history of political thought, including such topics as the experiences of European intellectuals who sought refuge in the United States during the Second World War (particularly the relationship between the philosopher Theodor Adorno, the novelist Thomas Mann, and the composer Arnold Schoenberg during their exile in Hollywood in the 1940s), the ways in which art and literature respond to catastrophes, and recent controversies involving the application of the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality to such issues as censorship, affirmative action, and civil disobedience.
Homepage: http://people.bu.edu/jschmidt/
Office Hours: Tuesday 12:30-2 PM, Thursday 1:30-3 PM .
Telephone: 617-353-4020
E-mail: jschmidt@bu.edu
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