William Max Nelson is an American and Canadian author and Professor of History at the University of Toronto.
He has published the scholarly books, Enlightenment Biopolitics (Chicago, 2024; winner of the Kenshur Book Prize and the Cheiron Book Prize) and The Time of Enlightenment (Toronto, 2021) as well as articles, chapters, and an edited volume.
His literary essays have been published in The Independent, The European Review of Books, Neue Rundschau, The Dundee Review of the Arts, and Five Ways of Being a Painting and Other Essays, and he’s been awarded the Noting Hill Essay Prize and been a finalist for the Iowa Review nonfiction award.