Jan E. Goldstein

Professor Jan E. Goldstein is the Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History at the University of Chicago. As a historian, her research has focused on the history of psychology and the self from Locke to Freud and has framed crucial shifts in ideas in relation to immediate and longer-term developments and broad social, political, and cultural contexts. In Console and Classify (1987), Goldstein studied the emergence of psychiatry in France and its struggle against the Church over the cure of souls. She also wrote The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750-1850 (2005), which examines the politics of selfhood and and traces the competition among three psychological theories: sensationalism, phrenology, and the philosophical psychology of Victor Cousin. As a coeditor of The Journal of Modern History, Goldstein serves as an interlocutor in discussion of contemporary historiographical practice. Some of her awards include the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and the David Pinkney Prize.