Dr. Jeffrey David Burson

Professor of History (2011).

Ph.D. George Washington University (2006); M. Phil. George Washington University (2003); B.A. Concordia University, Ann Arbor (1999).

Teaching and Research Interests: Early Modern and Modern France; European Enlightenment; Religion and Enlightenment; Enlightenment Catholicism, Age of Revolutions, c. 1760-1848

Upper Division Courses:

• HIST 3335: Revolutions in France and the Caribbean
• HIST 3437: Modern France and French Society in Global Context
• HIST 5236: Age of Revolutions in Europe and the Atlantic World 
•  
  HIST 5340: Age of Napoleon in Global Context
   

Contact Information:

Department of History
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8054
Statesboro, GA 30460-8054

Office: #3010, Interdisciplinary Arts Building
Tel.: 912-478-8532
Email: jburson@georgiasouthern.edu
Fax: 912-478- 0377

Selected Publications:

• “Theological Revolution and the Entangled Emergence of Enlightenment
  Secularization,” in Between Secularisation and Reform: Religion in the
  Enlightenment (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2022), 15-45.
• “Process, Contingency, and Cultural Entanglement: Toward a Post-Revisionism in
  Enlightenment Historiography,” Journal of the Western Society for French History 47
  (2021): 1-13.
• “The Polyvalence of Heterodox Sources and Eighteenth-Century Religious Change,”
  in Clandestine Philosophy: New Studies in Subversive Manuscripts in Early Modern
  Europe, 1620-1823, ed. Gianni Paganini, Margaret C. Jacob, John Christian Laursen
  (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), 328-51.
• The Culture of Enlightening: Abbé Claude Yvon and the Entangled Emergence of the Enlightenment (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2019).
• Skeptical Enlightenment: Doubt and Certainty in the Age of Reason, with Anton M. Matytsin (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Studies on the Enlightenment, 2019).
• The Culture of Jesuit Erudition in an Age of Enlightenment. Special Issue of Journal
  of Jesuit Studies 6, no. 3 (August 2019).
• “Dark Night of the Early Modern Soul: Humanism, Dualing Cartesianisms, Jesuits,
  and the New Physiology in the Shaping of Enlightenment Thought,” Historical
  Reflections/Réflexions historiques 45, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 4-27.
•  “Entangling the ‘Century of Lights’ to Disentangle the Enlightenment,” Belief and
  Politics in Enlightenment France: Essays in Honor of Dale K. Van Kley, ed. Mita
  Choudhoury and Daniel Watkins (Oxford University Studies of the Enlightenment;
  Liverpool University Press, 2019), 25-53.
• “The Distinctive Contours of Jesuit Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Context,” in
  Exploring Jesuit Distinctiveness: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ways of
  Proceeding within the Society of Jesus, ed. Robert Maryks (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 214-236.
• The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, Consequences. with Jonathan Wright. (New York, NY; Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
• “Unlikely Tales of Fo and Ignatius: Rethinking the Radical Enlightenment through
  French Appropriation of Chinese Buddhism,” French Historical Studies 38, no. 3
  (August 2015): 391-420.
• Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History with Ulrich Lehner.  Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.
• The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment: Jean-Martin de Prades and Ideological Polarization in Eighteenth- Century France. Foreword by Dale K. Van Kley. Notre Dame University Press, 2010.

Professional Activities

• Engagé.és Committee: Western Society for French History (2022-2023).
• Editorial Board: Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques (2019-Present).
• Bridges Initiative: Western Society for French History (2022-2024).
• Editorial Board: French Historical Studies (2018-2021).
• Governing Council: Western Society for French History (2019-2022).
• Faculty Governance Committee: College of Arts and Humanities, 2023-2025.

Current Research:

• Religion, Enlightenment. Revolution, and Empire in the Mediterranean World, 1650 – 1870, with Dzavid Dzanic (University of Toronto Press, manuscript under contract and in progress for September 2025).
• The Society of Jesus and the Enlightenment, Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies (Brill Press), manuscript in progress for Fall 2025.
• “Radical Rupture or the Receding Tide of Early Modern Erudition:  Rethinking Intellectual Change by Resituating the Origins of Eighteenth-Century Lumières,” in Intellectual Change in Early Modern Europe: Narratives and Contexts, ed. Stephen Taylor and Marco Barducci, Durham University  Ideas and Practices Series (Boydell & Brewer), chapter in progress for submission in September 2025.
• “Transposing Erudition,” in Debating Enlightenment, ed. Marco Barducci (London: Boydell & Brewer), in press.
• “Histories of Myth, Specters of Atheism, and the Modern Myth of Unbelief,” in A Cultural History of Western Myth, 1500-1800: The Enlightenment, ed. Jonathan C. P. Birch (Bloomsbury), under review.

Last updated: 8/6/2024