Dorinda Outram is Franklin I. and Gladys W. Clark Chair of History Emerita at the University of Rochester, USA. She has taught in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and Ireland, and held visiting positions in Paris, Gottingen and Berlin. She is the author of many works, including most recently Four Fools in the Age of Reason: Laughter, Cruelty and Power in Early Modern Germany (2019) and a fourth edition of The Enlightenment (2019).