Philippe Roger is professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and professor of French Literature at the University of Virginia. He is also the Director of Research at the Centre d’étude de la langue et de la littérature françaises. A specialist of Eigtheenth-century Literature and Culture, with a particular focus on the Revolutionary period, he has written extensively on literary theory and on the œuvre of Marquis de Sade including La Philosophie dans le pressoir (Grasset, 1976) and Sade, écrire la crise (Belfond, 1983). He has also contributed a seminal work on French-American relations from the Age of Enlightenment to the present, The American enemy. A History of French Anti-Americanism (University of Chicago Press, 2002). Among his current interests and projects are a book on sacrifice and self-sacrifice in the Age of Reason and a research on the literary constructs of “heroism”. Since 1996, Roger has been the managing editor of Critique, founded by George Bataille in 1946.