Robert Morrissey is the Benjamin Franklin Professor of French Literature in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, Director of the Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL), and Director of the France Chicago Center. Situated at the confluence of literature and poetics on the one hand and ideology and politics on the other, his work concentrates on themes and cultural currents over the longue durée. At the heart of much of his work is a passion for words as they both express and structure, describe and inform various discourses and identities, be they individual or collective.
His publications include L’Empereur à la barbe fleurie: Charlemagne dans la mythologie et l’histoire de France, which received the Grand Prix d’histoire Chateaubriand; La Rêverie jusqu’à Rousseau; Recherches sur un topos littéraire; Napoléon et l’héritage de la gloire; the University of Chicago-ARTFL online edition of L’Encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert; and a critical edition of Rousseau’s Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire.