Révolution française & American Revolution

Révolution française & American Revolution

With Dr. Iris de Rode, CNRS, and Paul Cheney, University of Chicago

French-American intellectual exchanges helped to found the United States, and since the American War of Independence have served as a storehouse of ideas and inspiration for later democratic revolutions. But the profound difference between the French and American revolutions have served no less as a touchstone in debates over what kind of democracy is worthy of this Enlightenment heritage. Dr. Iris de Rode and Paul Cheney will explore these issues in context of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the American Revolution (2026) and the new academic partnership between the CNRS and The University of Chicago.

Dr. Iris de Rode is a Dutch historian who specializes in the French participation in the American Revolution. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Paris 8, based on the personal papers of François-Jean de Chastellux. Iris teaches European, American and Transatlantic history at Sciences Po in Paris.   She is also the co-author of *La Marche sur Yorktown, le journal de Mathieu Dumas (*16 juin-6 octobre 1781), with Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (2018), and the
Recipient of the Chastellux Research Fellowship funded by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation.

Paul Cheney is Professor of European History, Fundamentals, and a Senior Fellow, Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, the College at the University of Chicago. An historian of Europe with a specialization in old regime France and its colonial empire. He studied political economy at the New School for Social Research before beginning his PhD training in history at Columbia University. He has taught at Columbia University, the European College of Liberal Arts (Berlin), and the Queen’s University of Belfast. He is the author of, most recently, *Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint-Domingue (*Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) published in French as as *Cul de Sac: Une Plantation à Saint-Domingue au XVIIIe siècle (*Arthème Fayard, 2022)