Research Projects A-B
(by author)
CULTURAL HISTORY OF URBAN ELITES 1500-1700
Sara Beam, Ph.D (1999).
Assistant Professor, University of Victoria
Dissertation Chair: Professor Carla Hesse, University of California
My research considers how the urban elite acted
as agents of cultural change during the early modern period. So far my research
has treated
this question
in two different contexts: a theatrical context and a judicial one. My doctoral
thesis focused on the patronage and censorship of farcical theater in France
as a barometer of changing urban mores. Countering Norbert Elias’s model
of top-down assimilation of civility, I argue that the Wars of a Religion was
the catalyst for the urban elite’s withdrawal from not only farcical
theatre but from popular culture in general. More recently I have begun a project
on torture and physical punishment in Europe during the same period. I am interested
in how religious and political changes encouraged European judges to modify
their punitive practices long before they were required to do by law. sbeam@uvic.ca (1/06)
LA FRANCE ET L’EUROPE AU XVIIIe
SIECLE : HISTOIRE SOCIALE DES PRATIQUES CULTURELLES
Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, Doctorat d'Histoire et Civilisation (1997) Habilitation à diriger
des recherches (2002)
Professeur d’histoire moderne à l'Université de Nice
Habilitation sur le thème Sociabilité, Franc-maçonnerie
et réseaux relationnels. Contributions pour une histoire sociale et
culturelle de l'espace européen des Lumières. Mes recherches
portent sur : (1) L'histoire de la sociabilité dans l'Europe moderne:
la sociabilité comme vecteur d'appropriations culturelles; les mutations
des formes de sociabilité aux XVIII e et XIXe siècles. (2) Les
réseaux de correspondance : dans le cadre du Réseau scientifique
européen d'étude de la communication à l'âge classique,
j'ai organisé à Arras en octobre 2000 le colloque international La
Plume et la Toile. Pouvoirs et Réseaux de correspondances dans
l'Europe des Lumières, (Artois Presses Université, 2002),
puis avec Dominique Taurisson, le colloque de Montpellier Les ego-documents à l’heure
de l’électronique. Nouvelles approches des espaces et des réseaux
relationnels, Montpellier, Presses universitaires de Montpellier, 2003,
555 p. (édition intégrale en ligne : http://www.egodoc.revues.org/ ).
Nous développons actuellement un programme d'édition et d'instrumentation électronique
des correspondances maçonniques, philosophiques, huguenotes, féminines http://www.egodoc.revues.org/corberon/ (3)
Les voyages d'initiation, de formation et d'agrément à travers
l'Europe des Lumières (édition
du Journal de Marie-Daniel Bourrée de Corberon; édition des Mémoires
de Karl-Heinrich von Heyking.. (4) La figure de l'étranger dans l'Europe
des XVIIIe-XIXe siècles. Ma thèse: L'Autre et le Frère.
L'Étranger en France au 18e siècle a été publié en
1998 chez Honoré Champion. Dernier ouvrage paru : L'Europe des Lumières,
PUF, Que sais-je ? n° 3715, 2005 pierre-yves.beaurepaire@wanadoo.fr (2/06) http://shadyc.ehess.fr/document.php?id=45
THE NATURE OF FRENCH ABSOLUTISM IN 1695
William Beik, Professor of History
Emory University
I am currently writing an interpretive social
history of early modern France, 1400-1800. My long-term research project
is an in-depth look at how the government of Louis
XIV functioned
in the
latter
part of
the reign. I am
taking an unorthodox
approach which is a bit of a gamble. I plan to look at as many records as possible
for one year, 1695 (really Sept 1694 to Dec. 1695). My objective is to capture
the functioning of government in action, in its various manifestations—central
ministries, provincial centers, ecclesiastical extensions, financial cartels,
corps of venal officeholders—and to evaluate it in the context of the
society that ran it. Thus I will not be writing the history of the various
institutions (royal council, parlement, estates, municipalities, etc.). Instead
I will try to evaluate the nature of absolute monarchy in terms such as social/class
interests, center-periphery relations, channels of authority, and distribution
of power and resources. In one single year it will not be possible to perceive
change. But interesting connections can
be revealed by observing how the various elites deal with a variety of issues,
and with one another, day by day. I
aim to consult as many records from the national, municipal and provincial
archives as possible, along with letters and private papers. wbeik@emory.edu (7/05)
LAW, CITY AND KING: LEGAL CULTURE,
LOCAL POLITICS AND STATE FORMATION IN EARLY MODERN DIJON also “PRIESTS
OF THE LAW:" LAWYERS, LAW, AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN EUROPE, 1500-1800
Michael
P. Breen, Ph.D (2000)
Associate Professor of History & Humanities, Reed College
[Note: Breen's original project, "Law City
and King," is scheduled for pulication by the University of Rochester Press
in summer 2007. What follows is the description of his new project]
The emergence of the “rule of law” as a basic principle
of social organization, a primary mechanism for dispute resolution, and a fundamental
cultural value was one of the most far-reaching developments in European history.
Law came to rival religion as one of the primary cultural systems through which
Europeans organized and comprehended their world. Like religion, law provided
men and women with concepts, norms, and vocabulary to categorize the people,
places, actio0ns, and objects that comprised their existence. It also offered
institutions, rituals, symbols, and authoritative texts for structuring and
ordering their lives.
“’Priests of the Law:’” examines the historical processes
that made the law, legal institutions, and legal culture dominant features of
Western European society by focusing on the development of the early modern legal
professions. Building on work of legal anthropologists, sociologists, and
historians, my book analyzes early modern European law both as a system of norms,
and as a network of tribunals and specialists with a distinctive cultural outlook.
Through a comparative, transnational analysis, it explains how lawyers and jurists
used diverse, and often divergent, authorities to formulate laws, jurisprudence,
and procedures that responded to both the needs of rulers and the growing population
that used the courts. At the same time, it also examines how lawyers developed
a culture of the “rule of law” and helped disseminate values they
associated with it, such as reason, equity, self-control, non-violence, and social
harmony. breenm@reed.edu (11/06)
NEGOTIATING COMMERCE, NEGOTIATING IDENTITY: IBERIANS IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE
Gayle Brunelle
Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton
This project, under contract with Brill, is to be a study of Spanish and Portuguese merchants, approximately two hundred in all who immigrated to northwestern France between 1480 and 1640. Although it will touch on Iberians in Lille, La Rochelle, Bordeaux and Bayonne, it will focus on those in Rouen and Nantes. I make three main arguments in "Negotiating Commerce, Negotiating Identity." First, immigrant merchants, made a crucial contribution to the revival of moribund French commerce after the Hundred Years War. Second, I examine the process of assimilation and attempt to discern why some merchants assimilated in French culture, and others did not. Third, and somewhat paradoxically, I argue that despite the religious issues that formed a constant backdrop to the lives of the later Iberian immigrants, the primarily reason for their migration was commercial opportunity, rather than religion. gbrunelle@fullerton.edu (6/08)
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