Andrew Curran (Ph.D., New York University, 1996) is Professor of French in Wesleyan’s Romance Languages and Literatures department. He is currently serving as Dean of Arts and Humanities at the university.
Curran’s research focuses on the eighteenth-century life sciences and medicine, with particular interest in human monstrosity and the science of French empire. His major publications include an edited volume (Faces of Monstrosity in Eighteenth-Century Thought in Eighteenth-Century Life) and two books: Sublime Disorder: Physical Monstrosity in Diderot’s Universe (SVEC: University of Oxford, 2001) and, more recently, The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011 / paper 2013). He is currently at work on a new book entitled Diderot: A Freethinker’s Guide to Life for Other Press.