ALLAN POTOFSKY is Professor at the Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7. He was awarded a PhD in History from Columbia University, New York, and previously was Associate Professor at the Université Paris-8 (Saint-Denis). His research interests include the history of Paris, the French Revolution, eighteenth-century Atlantic history, France in America, and comparative urban history, 1750-1850. He lives in the northeast Parisian quarter of Belleville.