William Max Nelson

William Max Nelson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto specializing in the history of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. His research explores intersections of time, race, and biopolitics in 18th-century France and the Atlantic world.

• Co-edited book: The French Revolution in Global Perspective (2013)
• Current work: Manuscript on biopolitics' emergence in the Enlightenment

Key research themes:

• Transnational circulation of racial ideologies in the Atlantic world
• Interplay between Enlightenment inclusion/exclusion discourses
• Scientific concepts of organicism in political thought
• Buffon's unacknowledged influence in Anglophone Atlantic literature

Nelson's seminars in 2018 (Paris) examined racial segregation legal frameworks, biopolitical discourses, and organicism's intellectual transmission across national boundaries during the Enlightenment period.