Clifford Siskin

Clifford Siskin is an American scholar whose work focuses on the Age of Enlightenment, Romantic literature, media and technology, and the history of knowledge. He is Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English and American Literature Emeritus at New York University. Previously he taught at Columbia University as the George Delacorte Professor of the Humanities, the University of Glasgow as the A. C. Bradley Professor, Oxford University as a Waynflete Lecturer, Stony Brook University, and Wayne State University. He has also been visiting fellow at The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and a visiting scholar at Stanford University. The publication of his 2010 book, This Is Enlightenment, co-edited with William Warner, was described as a major “event” in the study of literary history, the Enlightenment, and Romantic literature, and contributed to widespread interest within literary studies in the history of media.

Siskin is founder and director of The Re:Enlightenment Project, a group of scholars working on the history of knowledge, particularly the legacy of the Age of Enlightenment.

Education Siskin received a BA from Stanford University in 1972. He did his graduate study at University of Virginia, where he earned an MA in 1975 and a PhD in 1978. Siskin, Clifford (1998). The Work of Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1700-1830. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. . Siskin, Clifford and William Warner (eds.) (2010). This Is Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. . Siskin, Clifford (2016). System: The Shaping of Modern Knowledge. Cambridge: The MIT Press. .