Robert Zaretsky
Professor

• Phone: (713) 743-9018
• Email: robert.Zaretsky@mail.uh.edu
• Office: 17C Roy G. Cullen Building

Robert Zaretsky works in the field of modern European intellectual and cultural history. He is now completing two books for Harvard University Press: “A Life Worth Living: The Meaning of Albert Camus” and “Boswell’s Enlightenment.” In addition to his books, he is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, Le Monde Diplomatique, Chronicle of Higher Education, Los Angeles Review of Books and is a monthly columnist for the Jewish Daily Forward. He has a BA in Philosophy from McGill University, an MA in European History from the University of Vermont, and a PhD in European History from the University of Virginia.

Teaching

Professor Zaretsky teaches courses in modern French and European history, ranging from perspectives on the Enlightenment to everyday life in Occupied Europe, and from the modern experience of exile to the history of history writing.

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Research Interests

Professor Zaretsky is currently completing two books for Harvard University Press: “A Life Worth Living: The Meaning of Albert Camus” and “Boswell’s Enlightenment.”

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Selected Publications

Books

• France and Its Empire Since 1870, with Alice Conklin and Sarah Fishman (Oxford University Press, 2010).


• Albert Camus: Elements to a Life (Cornell University Press, 2010).


• The Philosophers' Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume and the Limits of Human Understanding, with John Scott (Yale University Press, 2009).


• Cock and Bull Stories: Folco de Baroncelli and the Invention of the Camargue (Nebraska University Press, 2005).


• Nîmes at War: Religion, Politics and Public Opinion in the Department of the Gard 1938-1944 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).

Recent Publications

• “Albert Camus’ Tragic Sense of Nostalgia,” in Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques (Spring 2013).


• “Tony Judt, Essayist and Pugilist,” in French Historical Studies (Winter 2012).


• “From Resistance to Revolution à la française,” in The Occupy Handbook, ed. Jane Byrne (Little, Brown, 2012).


• “Upon the Rock: James Boswell in Corsica,” in Southwest Review (Spring 2012).


• “My Life as a Door,” in The American Scholar (Summer 2012).


• “Boswell’s Grand Tour”, in London Magazine (June-July 2012).


• “Struggling with destiny: Barbara Tuchman’s Legacy as a Historian,” in Times Literary Supplement (February 24, 2012).