Andrew Curran, the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University, is a scholar of eighteenth-century France and a non-fiction writer. His journalistic writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The Paris Review, El País, Folha de S. Paolo, and The Wall Street Journal. He is also the author or editor of five books. His most recent book, Who's Black and Why? A Hidden Chapter in the Eighteenth-Century Invention of Race (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) was published by Harvard University Press in 2022. This book received the 2023 Assocation of American Publishers Prose award for best book in European history. Professor Gates and Curran were also nominated for a NAACP Image Award in the category of outstanding non-fiction work for this book. 

He and Professor Gates have also produced a history of race timelime.

Curran's earlier books were Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (Other Press, 2019), which was named one of the best biographies of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, The Australian, The Independent, NRC, Irish Times, El Cultural, and Open Letters Review, and has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Chinese. His previous book, The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Era of Enlightenment, was A Choice Outstanding Academic Title. Translated into French as L’Anatomie de la noirceur, this same book also received the 2018 Louis Marin Prize from the French l’Académie des sciences d’outre-mer. His first monograph was entiteld Sublime Disorder.

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. He has received grants and fellowships from the French Government, The Mellon Foundation, The National Endowment for the Humanities, NEH Public Scholarships, and, most recently, The Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Curran is currently serving on the editorial board of Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Diderot Studies. At Wesleyan, Curran teaches classes on race, travel, exploration, and the French Enlightenment. His next book, which will appear at Other Press, is entitled The Race Makers.

Professional website: www.andrewscurran.com

Contact: andrewscurran@me.com  / acurran@wesleyan.edu

Professor Andrew Curran, the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University, completed his Ph.D. in French literature at New York University in 1996. He taught at Union College in Schenectady, New York, for two years before coming to Wesleyan. He has also directed the Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris on two occasions. At Wesleyan, he teaches a variety of classes on French thought and culture from 1600-1900.