Public Research Talk: Mystics Made the Revolution: Spiritually Transformative Experiences in the Long Eighteenth Century with Nicole Bauer
Common Room, CSWR, 42 Francis Ave., Cambridge
Mon., Apr. 13, 2026, 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. 
Registration is required.
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Possession and trance were signs of weak minds in the eighteenth century, yet many, even those in privileged positions, reported visions, near-death experiences, and intense dreams. These altered states led thinkers to become more creative, to rely on their own experience rather than traditional authority, and to become more compassionate. These experiences also opened the doors to subversive, groundbreaking thought, which led to revolutionary action. Altered states were not a hidden, shadow side of the Enlightenment but rather integral to it, and we cannot understand the birth of modernity without taking them into serious consideration.
Nicole Bauer is a cultural historian specializing in early modern France. Her first book, Tracing the Shadow of Secrecy and Government Transparency (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), examined the changing attitudes towards secrecy in pre-revolutionary and revolutionary France. Her most recent book, Zen and the Anxious Academic: Resilience and Resistance Through Contemplative Practice (Lexington Books, 2024), explores the challenges academics face today, including burnout, anxiety, imposter syndrome, and the balance between activism and scholarship. It examines how Indigenous wisdom and ancient contemplative practices can support modern teachers and scholars. At the Center for the Study of World Religions, she will be conducting research for her current book project, Power, Possession, and the Modern Self. This book project will focus on the connections among mystical experiences, other altered states of consciousness, compassion, and ideas of the self in Enlightenment Europe and the Atlantic World.
Her research has been supported by the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, where she was the inaugural fellow, the University of Siegen (Universität Siegen), and the Institut français d’Amérique. Passionate about public humanities, she is also the Associate Director of the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, and has written public scholarship for the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Washington Post, and others. She teaches courses on the Enlightenment, gender and queer theory, and dabbles in film studies.
Gazette Classification: Religion
Sponsor: Center for the Study of World Religions
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator, [email protected]
More info: cswr.hds.harvard.edu…