معرفی
Robert Zaretsky holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Honors College and Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Houston's College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. His teaching spans courses on existentialism, terrorism, and the histories of Paris and Berlin. He is a prolific author of intellectual biographies and historical studies, with recent works including The Subversive Simone Weil (2021) and Catherine & Diderot (2019). Zaretsky contributes frequently to major publications like the New York Times and Foreign Policy, and was former history editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books. He earned his BA in philosophy from McGill University and PhD in history from the University of Virginia.
Education:
- Bachelor's in Philosophy, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
- Doctorate in History, University of Virginia
His research focuses on French intellectual history, existentialist thought, and Enlightenment-era figures. Zaretsky's writings blend scholarly rigor with accessible narrative, often examining how historical ideas inform contemporary issues. His book Thinking Through A Plague (2023) applies historical pandemic narratives to modern contexts, while his upcoming biography of Stendhal explores the intersection of literature and politics.
Media Contributions: Regular contributor to Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, and others. Analyzes historical parallels in modern crises through op-eds and essays.
Current Projects: Completing a biography of French novelist Stendhal for Basic Books, and researching historical plague narratives' relevance to the current pandemic.
