Devin J. Vartija is assistant professor of history at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 and a former post-doctoral fellow at the 脡cole des hautes 茅tudes en sciences sociales. He is an intellectual historian whose main body of work focuses on the complex interplay between race and equality in Enlightenment Europe. He received his Ph.D. (with distinction) in 2018 at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视. His first book, The Colour of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought, systematically interrogates the strands of equality and inequality, common humanity and racial classification that run through the Enlightenment and has been published (2021) by the 木瓜福利影视 of Pennsylvania Press (more info ).
By carefully reconstructing the intellectual world in which the modern concepts of race and equality were forged, he demonstrates that the all-too-common dichotomous view of the Enlightenment as either an emancipatory or a pernicious movement of modernity variously advanced by the left and right falls short of where the Enlightenment鈥檚 real significance lies: its self-reflexivity. It is a rigorous intellectual history that demonstrates the value of studying the history of political ideas: to appreciate that our concepts, both descriptive and normative, are not the concepts for understanding the world. Looking at the past opens up new ways of seeing.
He is currently working on two projects. One is a book-length examination of how debates concerning inclusion and exclusion, equality and inequality became central to Enlightenment historiography over the past fifty years. And he's developing a new project at the crossroads of intellectual history and the history of emotions that examines the emotional valence of equal and unequal treatment between the late Enlightenment and early French Revolution. It is an attempt to write a mode of intellectual history that privileges lived experience and affect.
He completed a research master鈥檚 (cum laude) in history at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视 in 2012 and obtained his bachelor鈥檚 degree (summa cum laude) from the interdisciplinary Arts and Science program at McMaster 木瓜福利影视 in Hamilton, Canada.
He is the former managing editor of the International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, published by and a board member of the Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. His research has been featured in the NRC Handelsblad and he has been interviewed by De Volkskrant and NPO Radio 1.