Imam Abdullah Antepli is the President of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas—an independent, globally recognized institution dedicated to art, spirituality, and human rights. He is a globally acknowledged scholar and leader in cross-religious and cross-cultural dialogue. His Muslim Leadership Initiative helped young Muslim American leaders understand Judaic and Israeli studies and cultivated compassion in the face of fear and hate. He built multiple organizations that facilitated religious and spiritual life on college campuses across the United States, sowing seeds of understanding between religions while upholding their cultural integrity and dignity. He has written extensively on religious and cultural issues, contributing his vibrant voice to national and international media on these crucial areas of public affairs. As a Muslim-American Imam and one of the few scholars bridging faith, ethics, and public policy—and as someone born in Turkey who has lived in three different countries—Abdullah Antepli offers the academic and interfaith worlds a vital element of intellectual, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity.
Alysa Bijl-Spiro is a senior at Rice University majoring in Philosophy and English and minoring in Politics, Law and Social Thought. Alysa enjoys writing across genres, including a philosophy honors thesis on the relationship between morality and meaningfulness, a French-to-English translation of The Myth of Sisyphus and a fictional novella taking place in early 20th-century Russia. Outside of her writing practice, Alysa is the founder of the Rice Undergraduate Philosophy Journal and the president of the Rice Philosophy Club, where she helps foster philosophical conversations among students from across campus. After graduating, Alysa will be completing a fellowship in Japan to study female authorship in the country and produce a series of short fictional stories.
Thimo Heisenberg is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rice University. A specialist in 19th and 20th century German Philosophy, his research interests include Hegel, political economy, and what the former can tell us about the latter. His books-in-progress include The Economy in German Idealism and A Guide to Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift. He earned his PhD at Columbia University.
Antoine Lilti was born in 1972. A graduate of the École normale supérieure and agrégé in history, in 2003 he defended a thesis at the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, under the supervision of Daniel Roche, entitled : ” Le Monde des salons. Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle “, published in 2005. He teaches as a lecturer at ENS Ulm, then as Director of Studies at EHESS from 2011. He joins the Collège de France in 2022. At the same time, he is active in publishing. From 2006 to 2011, he edited the journal Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales. From 2013 to 2023, he was director of the collection L’épreuve de l’histoire , published by Fayard. He currently directs ” L’histoire au présent “, published by Flammarion.
His work focuses on the social, cultural and intellectual history of the Enlightenment. He first studied the sociability practices of aristocratic elites and writers, then set out to show the emergence, in the eighteenth century, of a new form of recognition, celebrity, linked to changes in public space and individual identities. Since then, his work has extended to the multiple legacies of the Enlightenment.
Linsey Sainte-Claire is Assistant Professor of Francophone studies at Rice University. Currently completing her book manuscript Creole Epistemologies of Madness, her areas of expertise include French language, literature, and culture and Black, Caribbean, and African Studies. She earned her PhD at the University of Chicago.
Stephen W. Sawyer is the Ballantine-Leavitt Professor of History and Director of the Center for Critical Democracy Studies. Sawyer came to AUP from the University of Chicago center in Paris and the Ecole Normale Supérieure-rue d’Ulm where he was lecturer in the final years of his dissertation. After receiving fellowships from the EHESS, Fulbright, and Sciences Po, Sawyer served as part-time assistant to Pierre Rosanvallon at the Collège de France. A specialist in political history and theory, Sawyer earned his PhD at the University of Chicago. He has served on the editorial board of the Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales and as the Associate Editor for its English version since 2012. In 2014-15, he was named inaugural Neubauer Collegium Fellow at the University of Chicago. Appointed Directeur de publications of The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville in 2014, he founded the online platform Tocqueville21 in 2017. In 2018-2019, he was named research fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. In Spring 2020 he was invited Kratter Visiting Professor to the History Department at Stanford University.
Max Scholl is a junior at Rice University majoring in English and Anthropology and minoring in French Studies. His research interests include the relationship between literature, philosophy, and science, French continental philosophy, aesthetics and technology, 20th-century American literature, and slow cinema. He is a Moody Research Fellow and a co-founder of the Rice Critical Humanities Collective, a student organization dedicated to fostering conversations about current events and socio-political issues among the undergraduate population. Max is also a member of the National Humanities Leadership Council, ran by the National Humanities Center.”
Lajward Zahra is an independent journalist and junior at Rice University studying English, where she is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate and a Medical Humanities Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The American Prospect, Teen Vogue, and Business Insider, among other outlets.
Robert Zaretsky is Professor of History at the Honors College, University of Houston. A frequent contributor to publications including the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, he has written widely on topics across modern European (particularly French) culture, including books on Albert Camus, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, Simone Weil, and Denis Diderot and Catherine the Great. He earned his PhD at the University of Virginia.