Daniel Gordon

Professor

Office: Herter 627
Telephone: (413) 545-2223
Fax: (413) 545-6137
E-mail: dgordon@history.umass.edu

Degree: Ph.D., University of Chicago (1990).

Field(s) of interest: European history, comparative law

Research Interests and Professional Activities:

I am a professor of history and director of the Bachelor's Degree With
Individual Concentration (BDIC). I am also coeditor of the journal Historical Reflections.

I did a B.A. in History at Columbia University, a Ph.D. in History at the University of Chicago, and an M.S.L. (Master of the Study of Law) at Yale Law School.

My first academic job was a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford (1989-91), where I taught in the Cultures, Ideas, and Values program. I became an assistant professor of History and of History and Literature at Harvard (1991-1995). I came to UMass in 1995. I've had two visiting appointments since then: one at Stanford as visiting associate professor (1998-99), where I taught courses on the Enlightenment, and one as visiting professor at the Collège de France (2002), where I lectured on the sociologist Norbert Elias and his idea of "civilization."

My main teaching and research interest is the history of political and legal ideas, from the Enlightenment to the present.  Course offerings include Western Thought, U.S. Constitutional History, and Comparative Law.

I also have an interest in interdisciplinary education.  Promoting integrative thinking, leadership, and entrepreneurship inside the history department and in programs like BDIC, Commonwealth College, and General Education is part of my vocation.

Selected Publications:

Citizens Without Sovereignty: Equality and Sociability in French Thought, 1670-1789 (Princeton UP, 1994).

Translation of Voltaire's Candide (Bedford St. Martins, 1999).

Editor of Postmodernism and the Enlightenment (Routledge, 2001).

Articles in the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (Oxford UP, 2003) on "Citizenship," "Ernst Cassirer," "Sociability," and other topics.

Editor (with Michael Kwass) of Money in the Enlightenment, a special volume of Historical Reflections (Summer, 2005).

“From Emergency Law to Legal Process: Herbert Wechsler and the Second World War,” Suffolk University Law Review (2007), co-authored with Malick W. Ghachem.

I have written editorials for the History News Service and for The Public Humanist.

Numerous review essays for History and Theory, including "Is Tocqueville Defunct?" (vol. 43, 2004).

Also in progress is a book on the Muslim headscarf issue in France, Germany, Turkey, and the U.S.