SEMINAR: �Was America a Mistake? The Acad�mie de Lyon ponders on the consequences of the discovery of the New World in the 1780s�

Professor Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, Université Paris-8 Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Ph.D. 1995; Habilitation, 2003) is Professor of American history and civilization at the Université de Paris VIII, senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France, and Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. He is the author of L’Amérique avant les États-Unis. Une histoire de l’Amérique anglaise 1497-1776 (2013, revised paperback edition 2016, France-Amériques Award) and From New Babylon to Eden. The Huguenots and their Migration to Colonial South Carolina (2006, National Huguenot Society Award, Washington); and co-editor of A Companion to the Huguenots (2016), The Atlantic World of Anthony Benezet (1713-1784). From French Reformation to North American Quaker Antislavery Activism (2016), Histoire des Souffrances du sieur Elie Neau, sur les galères, et dans les cachots de Marseille (2014), Protestantisme et Révolutions (2012), Les Huguenots et l’Atlantique (2 vols., 2008-12), Naissance de l’Amérique du Nord. Les actes fondateurs, 1607-1776 (2008), Constructing Early Modern Empires. Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1550-1700 (2007), Protestantisme et Autorité (2005), and Memory and Identity. The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora (2003). He has lectured at Stanford (Fulbright grant, 2015), Boston College, Bayreuth, Roma Tre and has read papers in England (Oxford and Cambridge), South Africa, Israel, The Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, and Italy and has been fellow at Brown University twice (1998 and 2016).