Keith Michael Baker

Keith M. Baker is the J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Early Modern European History, and the Jean-Paul Gimon Director of the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Stanford University. Baker is one of the world's foremost historians of 18th-century France. His research on the cultural and political origins of the French Revolution has made important contributions to the development of a new understanding of that event and of its significance for the creation of modern politics. He has written on philosophy, politics, and social science in the work of Condorcet, on the political languages of the French ancient regime and on the ideological origins of the French Revolution. Current research is focused on the political languages of the French Revolution. His work on the Marquis de Condorcet offered a major reinterpretation of the philosopher of progress and social science who was one of the great figures of the French Enlightenment and Revolution. Baker served as the Director of the Stanford Humanities Center from 1995 to 2000, when he introduced the research workshops, now an integral part of the programming at the Center, and laid its plans for its move to its current location. He also served as Cognizant Dean for the Humanities in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences from 2000 to 2003. He was named Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the Government of France in 1988. He was co-president of the Society for French Historical Studies in 2004-05 and president of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies from 2007 to 2011.