- Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Princeton University, 1988
- B.A., Comparative Literature, University of California-Berkeley, 1983
Eric MacPhail
Professor, French and Italian
Adjunct Professor, Comparative Literature
Professor, French and Italian
Adjunct Professor, Comparative Literature
I am the editor of the journal Erasmus Studies, formerly the Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, and I work on Renaissance humanism, both in the Latin and vernacular traditions. My current project, which I’m calling Odious Praise, deals with the rhetorical exercise of praising what others blame, including the praise of superstition and religious dissimulation, which are generally held in opprobrium. The reversal of values inherent in odious praise stimulated some of the first serious attempts at social science, including a social science of religion and politics, in such Renaissance thinkers as Machiavelli, Bodin, and Montaigne.