[International Guest Researchers Programme], In Conversation with Jean-François Cottier and Eric MacPhail

Jean-François Cottier, Professor at Université Paris Cité is hosting Professor Eric MacPhail from Indiana University based in Bloomington, United States. Our two researchers are Erasmus specialists, a Dutch humanist and one of the greatest thinkers of the Renaissance. Together, they will co-publish an issue of the journal “Erasmus Studies” on the question of religious tolerance in the writings of Erasmus. Watch their video and learn more about their research project!

About

Jean-François Cottier, is professor of Latin language and literature at Université Paris Cité, head of the Master of Letters, Arts and Humanities, at the French Literature, Art and Film Studies Department (LAC) and co-director of the “Thélème” axis. He is an elected member of the Scientific Council of the LAC department and Associate Professor at the University of Montreal. He has published several books on medieval and neo-Latin literature: spiritual and monastic literature, humanist exegesis of the Bible, treatises on play, Latin texts from New France. He is the editor for ASD (Amsterdam) of Paraphrases on the Gospels by Erasmus.

Eric MacPhail is a professor at Indiana University, Bloomington in the Department of French and Italian. He is a specialist of the Renaissance and has worked on Rabelais, Montaigne, and the Pleiades as well as on Erasmus and Renaissance humanism. He is currently editor of the journal “Erasmus Studies”. Each year he organizes two major conferences on Erasmus: the Margaret Mann Phillips Lecture and the Roland Bainton Lecture. His most recent book, “Religious Tolerance from Renaissance to Enlightenment: Atheist’s Progress (Routledge, 2020),” examines the relationship between the status of atheism and the theory and practice of tolerance in Europe from the beginning of the Reformation to the aftermath of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.