The Besterman Lecture of the Voltaire Foundation is an annual highlight of our activities, delivered by internationally renowned scholars of the Enlightenment.
The previous Besterman Lecture took place on 17 November 2022, and was delivered by Professor Helena Rosenblatt (CUNY).
The recorded lecture can now be watched here or on our YouTube channel.
Previous Besterman Lectures
Previous Besterman Lectures are available as podcasts or on YouTube (*) and over the past years the topics have included:
* November 2021: Professor Sophia Rosenfeld (University of Pennsylvania), ‘How the Enlightenment understood truth — and why that matters’.
* November 2020: Professor William Doyle (University of Bristol), ‘Who were the French Revolutionaries?’.
* November 2019: Professor Lorraine Daston (Director Emerita, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), Rule Mania in Enlightenment Paris
*November 2018: Professor Keith M. Baker (Stanford University), ‘Writing Rights in 1789’.
*December 2017: Professor Willard McCarty (King’s College, London), ‘Digital Rhetoric, literae humaniores and Leibniz’s dream’.
*June 2017: Professor David Wootton (Anniversary Professor of History at York University), ‘Adam Smith: Poverty and famine’.
2013: Professor Céline Spector (Université Bordeaux 3, Membre honoraire de l’Institut Universitaire de France), ‘Civilisation et empire: la dialectique négative de l’Europe au siècle des Lumières’.
2012: Professor Ourida Mostefai (Boston College), ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les conflits des Lumières’;
and *Dr Nathalie Ferrand (École Normale Supérieure, Paris), ‘Rousseau, archive et invention’.
2011: Dr Katie Scott (The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London), ‘Emulation: Anxieties of Influence and the Progress of Plagiarism in Eighteenth-Century French Art’.
2010: Professor Pierre Frantz (Université de Paris-Sorbonne), ‘Le théâtre de Voltaire: dramaturgie et politique’.
2009: Professor Gregory S. Brown (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), ‘Beaumarchais and the Bastille: An Aristocratic Villa in Revolutionary Paris’.
2008: Professor Marie-Hélène Cotoni (Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis), ‘Les Dégoûts de Voltaire. Impressions et expression’.
2007: Professor Hubert Bost (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris), ‘La Beaumelle, huguenot éclairé: quelques enseignements de sa correspondence’.
2006: Professor Antony Mckenna (Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne), ‘Faith and Reason in the Classical Age: Pierre Bayle in the Light of New Research’.
2005: Professor Catherine Volpilhac-Auger (ENS Lettres et Sciences humaines, Lyon), ‘Comment inventer des manuscrits inédits de Montesquieu?’
2003: Professor José-Michel Moureaux (Université de Caen), ‘Voltaire éditeur’.
2002: Professor François Moureau (Université de Paris-Sorbonne), ‘Itinéraires jésuites en Chine ou les Lumières naissent à l’Est’.
MAISON FRANÇAISE D’OXFORD
For events at the Maison française d’Oxford (including the Early Modern French seminars), and to download the Hilary term card, see Maison française d’Oxford website.