April Shelford

Candidate statement

April G. Shelford holds a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University (1997); she is now Associate Professor of History at American University, Washington, DC. A specialist in the intellectual history of early modern Europe, she won the Selma Forkosch prize for best article published in the Journal of the History of Ideas in 2002. She published Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre-Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life, 1650-1720 with the University of Rochester/Boydell Press in 2007. She is now completing a book manuscript, A Caribbean Enlightenment, which was inspired by a two-year visiting professorship at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. In connection with this project, she has made numerous conference presentations, published articles in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Atlantic Studies, and History of European Ideas, and contributed a chapter to Before the Public Library: Reading, Community, and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850. She has served twice on the Governing Council of the Western Society of French History, and she co-edited the association's Proceedings (now Journal) for three years as it transitioned from print to online. She served on the ASECS Travel Awards Committee in 2018