.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research Projects I-Q
(by author)

"THE CHIMING CITY," CATHOLIC RITUAL AND FRENCH IDENTITY IN AVIGNON ON THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1768-1791.
Eric F. Johnson, Ph.D. (UCLA, 2003)
Assistant Professor, Kutztown University (Fall 2006)
Director, Lynn A. Hunt

My dissertation was about the role of Catholic ritual in the political discourse of Avignon at the end of the ancien régime. Avignon was a papal city until the Revolution, but maintained close ties with the French monarchy out of economic self interest. I am showing how religious rituals were used to balance papal and royal representation in the city, and how local elites used them to create a sense of independent authority for themselves. I argue that because these rituals were such an important part of articulating urban identity in Avignon, local revolutionaries used them to legitimize the Revolution in Avignon and direct the city's political loyalties towards the king after it broke with papal authority. One of the broader implications of this is the continued vitality of religious ritual in French political discourse in a period that is normally characterized as becoming more secular, and in doing so I am trying to blur some of the distinctions between the early modern and modern periods. This ties into my overriding research interests, which concern how religions beliefs are blended with older traditions and folklore, and how they evolve and adapt according to changing social contexts. My continuing research will explore the ways in which older traditions of understanding reality form the foundation for more modern or rational cosmologies.   ejohnson@kutztown.edu  (6/08)


DEVIOUS EMPIRE: MARIE-ANTOINETTE AND THE AUSTRIAN PLOT
Thomas E. Kaiser, Professor of History
University of Arkansas at Little Rock

This project puts the notorious vilification of Marie-Antoinette within the context of French foreign policy. Since the sixteenth century, French diplomats had imagined that the house of Austria was plotting to destroy France for purposes of imposing Austrian "tyranny" on Europe. Because its ambitions outstripped its military resources, the Habsburgs had allegedly relied upon devious methods--deceit, treaty-breaking, assassinations--to realize its ambitions. The Franco-Austrian alliance of 1756 paradoxically intensified French suspicions. Following the disastrous Seven Years' War, the dévot faction pinned responsibility for the hated alliance upon their principal enemy, Louis XV's mistress Madame de Pompadour, who had in fact lobbied hard for it. They similarly represented the marriage of Marie-Antoinette to the dauphin as a deadly ruse in the Austrian tradition to destroy French preeminence from within. Upon Louis XVI's accession, the dévots spread rumors that Vienna was using Marie-Antoinette, the reputed master of her husband's allegedly weak will, to co-opt French foreign policy. The "Austrian plot" metastasized in the 1780s, as France experienced a decline in its prestige abroad partly as a result of her brother Joseph II's foreign policy. During the French Revolution, journalists charged that an "Austrian Committee" headed by the queen was eroding national security; the Brissotins exploited Austrophobia to ratify a declaration of war against Austria; Marie-Antoinette was tried and executed for collusion with her native land; and the "Foreign Plot," an amalgam of Austro- and Anglophobia, provided the metatext of the Terror. In short, the "Austrian Plot" was one of the fundamental political myths of early modern France. tekaiser@ualr.edu    (3/05)

CONFESSION AND POLITICAL CULTURE AT NIMES, 1550-1700
Brian Kaschak, ABD, Chateaubriand Fellow in 2002-2003
Director: William Beik, Emory University

My dissertation explores developments in political culture in early modern Nimes with particular reference to the impact of religious reform and the rise of absolutism on it. I examine this theme within the context of civic rituals, municipal elections, city administration (especially the college and the hopitaux), and public violence. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, political culture was a vehicle for religious conflict and an instrument for confessional identity formation. Protestant reform in the late 1500's and Catholic reform after 1630 resulted in modifications in the performance of diverse aspects of political culture, but left its underlying structure largely intact. The incorporation of local practices and institutions by the absolutist state into its governing apparatus caused more consequential changes in political culture. While many practices remained intact, the traditional, municipal orientation of political culture disappeared in the last decades of the 1600's in favor of a royal one. This project is based on a wide range of sources: city council deliberations, municipal contracts and financial documents, proces-verbaux concerning the consulate's legal activity, Catholic diocesan archival material, the records of the Protestant consistory, and literary manuscripts. Besides its focus on urban history, my dissertation also addresses Reformation historiography (especially confessionalization theory) and the place of religion in the construction of the absolutist state.  Mumasnake@aol.com   (2/06)

THE DYNAMICS OF ENCLOSURE IN 17TH-18TH CENTURY FRENCH RELIGIOUS WOMEN'S COMMUNITIES
Heidi Keller-Lapp, ABD and Faculty Fellow (UC San Diego)
Directors: Cynthia Truant and John Marino, UC San Diego

My current projects focus on the 17th/18th century French Ursulines, a religious order both enclosed AND yet still charged with the social function of educating young girls. Part of the larger corporate life of French women's religious orders, the Ursulines provide a means for studying societal functions served by monastic women in Counter-Reformation France and their contributions to Catholic renewal and French civilité. My dissertation (to be defended in Fall 2005) investigates the missions of four groups of Ursuline nuns (from Rouen, St. Denis, and Vannes) commissioned by the Compagnie des Indes to fulfill colonial duties in the French colonies in Quebec (1639), Martinique (1681), Louisiana (1727), and Pondicherry, India (1738). The dissertation highlights their voyages on the high seas and the impact of the colonial experience on their Order. This comparative study provides multiple opportunities to investigate the cross-Atlantic transportation and transformation of corporate culture and identity and to examine the role of the Ursulines in early French colonization. Moreover, it reveals the dynamism of an enclosed monastic order, examining issues of interior/exterior space and advancing our understanding of what it meant to be "enclosed" in early modern France. New research projects expand on these voyages and colonial experiences utilizing new colonial sources.    hkellerlapp@UCSD.Edu    (7/05)


FRENCH ROYAL ACTS PRINTED BEFORE 1601: A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL STUDY
Lauren J. Kim, ABD, Reformation Studies Institute, University of St. Andrews
Supervisor: Professor Andrew Pettegree

 My PhD dissertation is a study of royal acts printed in French before 1601. It provides the first detailed analysis of this neglected category of texts, and examines the acts’ significance in French legal, political and printing culture. The analysis of royal acts reveals three key historical practices regarding the role of printing in judiciary matters and public affairs. The first is how the French crown communicated to the public. Chapters one and two discuss the royal process of dissemination of edicts and the language of royal acts. The second is how printers and publishers manoeuvred between the large number of royal promulgations and public demand. An overview of the printing industry of royal acts is provided in chapter three and the printers of these official documents are covered in chapter four. The study of royal acts also indicates which edicts were published frequently. The last two chapters examine the content of royal decrees and discuss the most reprinted acts. Chapter five explores the period before 1561 and the final chapter discusses the last forty years of the century. An appendix of all royal acts printed before 1601, which is the basis of my research for this study, is included. It is the first comprehensive catalogue of its kind and contains nearly six thousand entries of surviving royal acts printed before 1601. ljk3@st-andrews.ac.uk (3/07)


UNDERMINING OBEDIENCE IN ABSOLUTIST FRANCE: THE CASE OF THE PORT ROYAL NUNS, 1609-1709
Daniella J. Kostroun, Ph.D. (2000)
Assistant Professor of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Directors: William Reddy and Kristen Neuschel, Duke University

My research examines the intersection of religion, gender and absolutism under Louis XIV through a case study of the Port Royal nuns from 1609-1709. The Port Royal women, long known for their heroic commitment to their religious beliefs under persecution from Louis XIV, have nonetheless remained excluded from the wider narratives of Jansenist political history that have recently emerged through the work of Dale Van Kley, Catherine Maire and others. By placing the nuns at the center of analysis, I show that these women were deeply involved in the Jansenist conflicts as proprietors of a wealthy religious community within the contested jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal de Retz, and as self-proclaimed reformers of the Catholic Church. I have found that these women developed a strategy of resistance that engaged with fundamental assumptions about gender, order and authority that contested the legitimacy of Louis XIV's religious policies. By highlighting the centrality of gender to the Jansenist conflicts, my research explains the long-standing puzzle of why Louis XIV was so preoccupied with this group of "innocent virgins" as well as why they have increasingly been marginalized from Jansenist scholarship since the 18th century. In addition to revising my dissertation into a book, I am also working on related projects on early modern feminism, on the origins of the public sphere and on the relationship between the notion of freedom of conscience and constitutional legal theory.   dkostrou@iupui.edu    (8/05)


"LE COEUR D'UN BON CITOYEN": THE SENTIMENTALIZATION OF CITIZENSHIP IN 18TH-CENTURY FRANCE
Anastasia Lazakis, ABD
Dissertation Director: William M. Reddy, Duke University

My dissertation explores the political meanings of Enlightenment-era representations of ancient citizens. Literary scholars have long recognized that famous Romans and Greeks were re-imagined in the 18th century, according to sentimentalist conventions that emphasized their emotions as fathers, spouses, lovers, and friends, and downplayed earlier preoccupation with more martial, masculinist virtues. Yet there has been little effort to harness this insight to the work of intellectual and political historians, increasingly interested in the disputes over absolutist monarchy in pre-revolutionary France. Moving beyond the tiny corpus of systematic, canonical works of political theory typically dwelled on by "Cambridge School” historians, I study tragedies about ancient republicans, criticism of them, poems, novels, and popularized histories about ancients published in 18th-century periodicals, as well as moral and educational tracts. Focusing on four writers, Marmontel, Grimm, La Harpe, and Fréron, I recover the selective ways their constructions of ancients’ moral sentiments and emotional bonds were used to intervene in ongoing public debate over the merits and demerits of absolutist culture, sociability, and selfhood. My study of specific agents, and of literary genres often appealing to emotion rather than to reason, allow me to nuance the generalized conclusions historians have reached about “classical republicanism” in the pre-revolutionary era. (1/05)  al23@duke.edu


IVRESSE ET IVROGNERIE EN FRANCE DU XVI e AU XVIII e SIÈCLE
Matthieu Lecoutre
Agrégé d’histoire, Chargé d’enseignement à l’Université de Bourgogne
Direction de Benoît Garnot à l’Université de Bourgogne.

L’époque moderne apparaît comme le moment d’un accroissement notable de la consommation de boissons alcoolisées. Il semble paradoxal que ce phénomène se déroule au moment même où des courants favorisant l’ordre s’épanouissent. Il s’agit alors de vérifier dans quelle mesure ces siècles caractérisés par l’essor de l’absolutisme, des Réformes, de la civilisation des moeurs, des mouvements humanistes à tendance christocentrique ou des Lumières fondées sur la raison sont aussi ceux d’une augmentation de l’ivresse et de l’ivrognerie. Est-ce qu’il y a une volonté réelle des pouvoirs civils et religieux de lutter contre l’ivresse et l’ivrognerie ? N’y a-t-il pas plutôt des adaptations et des échanges entre ces pouvoirs, qui peuvent manier tour à tour la réglementation, la prévention, la répression, le discours moralisateur, la tolérance ou une relative indifférence, et la population construite autour de pratiques et d’objectifs culturels différents et variés ? Des fluctuations d’intensité de cette volonté d’acculturation ne sont-elles pas observables ? Enfin quelles sont les solutions apportées aux deux phénomènes ainsi que leurs échecs ? Cette étude est fondée sur des archives judiciaires, littéraires, religieuses, médicales, iconographiques ou musicales. Elle permet de réfléchir à des thèmes d’histoire judiciaire, littéraire, culturelle, politique, médicale, artistique, religieuse, économique et sociale. lecoutre-oiry@wanadoo.fr (11/06)


LYON ET LA MER (1661-1792)
Olivier Le Gouic, professeur certifié d'histoire-géographie
Doctorant - Laboratoire SOLITO - Université de Bretagne-Sud (Lorient)
Directeur : M. Gérard Le Bouëdec

Mes recherches consacrées aux relations entre Lyon et les espaces maritimes à l'époque moderne, de Colbert à la Révolution, ont pour objet d'évaluer à partir de cet exemple la place prise par les grandes villes de l'intérieur du royaume dans l'aventure maritime et coloniale française. Au-delà des relations et des échanges entre Lyon et les grands ports du royaume (Bordeaux, Nantes, Marseille, Rouen, Lorient, etc.), je cherche à mesurer le degré d'implication des milieux d'affaires lyonnais dans les trafics coloniaux. Ceci m'amène actuellement à explorer en particulier trois pistes : celle du commerce entre Lyon et Cadix, carrefour incontournable des échanges avec l'Amérique espagnole ; celle de l'émigration lyonnaise vers la Nouvelle-France (Canada et Louisiane) aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles ; et celle de la participation des Lyonnais au commerce et à l'économie de plantation dans les colonies françaises d'outre-mer, Antilles et Mascareignes en particulier. Publications récentes: "Le commerce des Français à Cadix vu par les consuls de France (1763-1778)", Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest, Rennes, P.U.R., 2005, tome 112, n°3, p.71-104; "Pierre Poivre et les épices : une transplantation réussie", in S. Llinarès - P.Hrodej, Techniques et Colonies XVIe-XXe siècles, Paris, S.F.H.O.M., 2005, p.103-126.   OlivierleGouic@aol.com   (1/06)


COMMUNAUX ET COMMUNAUTÉS D'HABITANTS EN ANJOU: L'EXEMPLE DE SOULAIRE DU XVE AU XIXE SIÈCLE
Estelle Lemoine-Maulny, doctorante à l'Université d'Angers
Directeurs: Michel Nassiet et Antoine Follain

L’histoire des espaces collectifs et d’utilisation collective n’est pas encore assez connue, notamment dans certaines régions où ils eurent pourtant une grande importance. S’intéressant à ce type d’espaces en Anjou, le village de Soulaire, situé à une dizaine de kilomètres au nord d’Angers, nous offre un cadre exceptionnel. Ce village est en effet doté d’un fonds d’archives unique en France du Nord, à savoir les archives des procès que les habitants et biens tenants durent soutenir pendant plus de deux siècles contre différents seigneurs et contre l’Etat afin d’être maintenus dans la propriété et l’usage de leurs biens collectifs menacés. Cet ensemble, formé de quelques neuf mille pages, permet d’étudier plusieurs siècles des procès d’une personne morale : la communauté des « habitants et biens tenants » prolongée après 1789 par la municipalité puis par un « syndicat » des usagers et propriétaires, dans le cadre problématique de l’histoire des biens collectifs de ces populations. Ce projet recoupe ainsi un vaste panorama de recherches dans l’histoire des campagnes, du XVe au XIXe siècle, à savoir les usages sociaux de la justice par un acteur collectif, la conflictualité rurale, l’histoire politique et administrative du village et encore l’histoire économique et sociale des campagnes. lemoine_estelle@yahoo.fr (3/06)


LYON, 1594-1654: UN PORTRAIT POLITIQUE
Yann Lignereux, Doctorat en histoire moderne (novembre 2001)
Maitre de conférence à l'Université de Nantes
Directeur de thèse : Denis Crouzet, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV)

Ma thèse étudie les destinées modernes de la " bonne ville " renaissante en prenant le cas de Lyon à l'époque de la restauration bourbonienne de l'autorité de l'Etat royal et de l'affirmation d'une monarchie exécutive et absolue sous le règne de Louis XIII. Traditionnellement tenue pour être celle de l'assujettissement des cités au projet monarchique, absolutiste et centralisateur, cette période constitue à Lyon une histoire beaucoup plus nuancée qui n'est ni la chronique de l'inévitable dégénérescence de la " bonne ville " ni la genèse baroque de la " ville classique " du XVIIIe siècle. Elle constitue un moment historique original qui ne peut être réduit à ces seules problématiques et enfermé dans ces seules références. A travers la mise en place, après l'échec ligueur, d'une figure nouvelle de la " bonne ville " que j'ai appelé la " ville royale," puis, après les limites et l'échec de cette renaissance au cours des années 1630, le Consulat lyonnais s'est imaginé une culture politique de collaboration avec le Prince dans laquelle l’absolu du but poursuivi préservait l’identité du premier vis-à-vis des ambitions du second. Le nouvel hôtel de ville, construit à partir de 1646, témoignait ainsi triplement de la vitalité d'un héritage historique, de la soumission administrative de la Cité à la monarchie absolue et, paradoxalement, de l'ambition d'autonomie politique de la ville par le biais de la mission glorieuse et sacrée de ses élites. Mes recherches actuelles portent sur les valeurs et les pratiques du politiques au XVIIe siècle, en particulier à travers l'étude des discours des officiers de justice et de finance et à travers les politiques d'aménagements urbains. Je m'intéresse également à l'ambassade romaine de Charles d'Halincourt en 1603-1608"    yann.lignereux@wanadoo.fr  (2/06)


WOMEN’S WORK AND OTHER ISSUES IN EARLY MODERN BRITTANY
Nancy L. Locklin, Ph.D (2000)
Associate Professor at Maryville College, Maryville, TN.
Dissertation Director: William Beik, Emory University

My first book, Women’s Work and identity in Eighteenth-century Brittany, concerned the economic role of women in 17th- and 18th-century Brittany. This project was a case study of women during the early modern era in a French province which has rarely been studied but which has much to offer. The particular legal customs of Brittany and the strength of women in that economy allow me to test some of the established notions in women’s economic history. Though I study women with a special regard for work issues, I favor a broad model that encompasses women’s economic lives as producers, heirs, vendors and consumers. I use a variety of source material, including tax rolls, contracts, guild records, court cases and police archives. Current projects include an article about a Breton custom that legally recognized lifelong partnerships between adult, unmarried women. I view this primarily as an alternative to marriage or the convent for women. I am also beginning work on a second book in which I will explore the ways in which love, sex and affection shaped family and household arrangements in the eighteenth century.  nancy.locklin@maryvillecollege.edu.   (7/08)

THE SUBLIME INVENTION: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF BALLOONS IN EUROPE FROM 1783-1820
Michael R. Lynn, Ph.D (1997)
Associate Professor, Agnes Scott College
Director: Domenico Sella, University of Wisconsin - Madison

In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers shocked France and the rest of the world with their invention of the hot air balloon. Within a short period animals and then humans went aloft in hot air and hydrogen balloons. This instigated a "balloon craze" and paved the way for manned flights and marked the first time that humans had defied gravity and left the earth to roam through the heavens. Balloons became an emblem of the age of the Enlightenment and quickly came to occupy the minds and thoughts of scientists and amateurs alike. Launches were highly public affairs with massive crowds in attendance that often paid for the privilege of watching balloons take off. This is an early instance of mass culture with socially mixed groups all participating in a single scientific event both as patrons and witnesses. This project analyzes the place of ballooning in France and Europe from its conception in 1783 until about 1820, when balloons began to lose their appeal and their place in popular spectacles.mlynn@agnesscott.edu (8/05)

CONSUMING BEAUTY: THE COMMERCE OF COSMETICS IN FRANCE, 1750-1800
Morag Martin, Ph.D (1999)
Assistant Professor, History Department, SUNY Brockport
2Advisor: Timothy Tackett, University of California, Irvine

During the second-half of the eighteenth-century, a growing number of writers, philosophers, moralists and social commentators vehemently attacked all aspects of aristocratic power. The artificial layers of paint and powder worn by most aristocrats came to symbolize most strikingly the social and sexual deceptions rife at court. Cosmetics, as masks of deceit, were fundamentally implicated in the abuse of royal and aristocratic power. Most historians have assumed that this turn against aristocratic luxury marked the death-knell of cosmetics. Yet, in the same period, these non-essential luxury items became available to an expanded public for the first time. Previously aimed at the elites and sold in expensive packaging, cosmetics were now being advertised in Parisian affiches and in shops and street corners at affordable prices. To market their goods, cosmetic sellers touted their naturalness and benign composition, redefining themselves and their products as the perfect Enlightenment accessory. My dissertation traces both the attacks against the use of artifice and the redefinition of cosmetics as acceptable consumer items. Ultimately, the practices of advertising, marketing and selling cosmetics were capable of subverting the criticisms aimed at undermining the use of makeup. This triumph for small-entrepreneurial artisans was an essential component of the development of consumerism in France. Parts of this work was published as articles in Fashion Theory, Medical History and The Western Society for French History Proceedings. I am currently revising my dissertation into a book manuscript. My next project focuses on the construction of masculinity in the late eighteenth century through to the 1830s. mmartin@brockport.edu    (9/05)

COERCION, CONVERSION AND COUNTERINSURGENCY IN THE FRANCE OF LOUIS XIV
Roy McCullough, Ph.D. (2005)
Dissertation Advisor: Prof. John A. Lynn, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

My dissertation examines institutions of domestic coercion under Louis XIV. The primary focus is, of course, on the army. But I also present detailed examinations of local institutions that possessed coercive potential such as the various militias, the armed companies used in the collection of the taille and the gabelle, and the maréchaussée. The first part of my dissertation deals with the coercive aspects of tax collection and with the Crown's military response to fiscal revolts. The second half discusses the enforcement of Louis XIV's religious policies with a particular focus on the infamous ‘dragonnades’ and the counterinsurgency campaign waged against the Camisards in the mountains and plains of Languedoc. In my treatment, I examine 1) the decision-making process at the highest levels, highlighting the frequent debates among officials concerning the efficacy (and cost-effectiveness) of using the army in such roles; 2) the practical problems of implementation encountered by the intendants, governors and other responsible figures, and their expectations with regard to local institutions 3) the impact and consequences of various coercive policies at the local level. My dissertation will show that both the coercive inclination of Louis XIV and the coercive capacity of the French army have been overstated. This raises interesting questions about the role of the army in the projection of state power and its contribution to the process of state formation in Early Modern France.   rmccullough1@msn.com     (7/05)


MARRIAGE TRIALS IN LATE MEDIEVAL FRANCE (1400-1500)
Sara McDougall PhD. candidate, Yale University
Dissertation advisors: Paul Freedman and Anders Winroth

My dissertation “Marriage Trials in Late Medieval France” examines the practice and prosecution of crimes against the sacrament of marriage in fifteenth century Champagne. The registers of the diocesan court of Troyes describe a range of behaviors considered illegal by judicial officials, who assigned penitential punishments ranging from small fines to public shaming and imprisonment. The context of these encounters emerges from a study of the sacramental theology of marriage, the body of laws and commentaries written to explain and enforce these ideas, the sermons and confession manuals intended as means of transmission of these teachings to parishioners, and the social practices described in various documentary and literary sources. We find as a result a society that had internalized and adapted the Christian ideal of sacramental, indissoluble marriage, but also a society that included many individuals who questioned these teachings or could not live up to the expectations of the doctrine. This project thus addresses the nature of relations between church and society, the role of the bishop?s court in marriages, and married life itself in the century preceding the Reformation. sara.mcdougall@yale.edu    (3/07)


ORDER AND THE PEOPLE: MEN, WOMEN, AND THE COURTS IN THE CONTROL OF INTER-MALE VIOLENCE IN LOUIS XIV'S PARIS
Jacob Melish, Ph.D (2005)
Instructor, University of Massachusetts Boston
Dissertation committee chair: David Bien (University of Michigan - Ann Arbor)

My research concerns artisans and laborers in early modern Paris. My dissertation, which I am revising for publication, examines how working men and women, as well as the royal courts, sought to limit inter-male violence. My work deepens our understanding of popular conceptions of order, how people enforced them, and their relationship to official conceptions of order and institutions of social regulation. I first expand our knowledge of early modern popular masculinity by showing that the control of other men’s violence — for example, through bystanders breaking up fist fights and similar altercations — was just as important to working men as the defense of personal honor. I then examine how women sought to shape the sub-culture of men through a deft use of "verbal force" including shaming and manipulating aggressive male understandings of honor. Several chapters deal with the multi-faceted relationship between the royal criminal courts and "the people." I primarily use eye witness testimonies that were part of an exceptionally detailed series of criminal court cases from late-seventeenth-century Paris. My next project concerns the history of everyday relations between spouses in artisanal families from the late seventeenth century to the French Revolution. The work will be two-fold: to present a typology of relations between husbands and wives, and to chart the increasing willingness of the royal courts, in practice more than in law, to augment the legal obligations upon husbands.  jmelish@earthlink.net  (12/05)


MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE
Stephen Miller, Assistant professor
University of Alabama at Birmingham

This project examines the monarchy's efforts to set up provincial assemblies of landowners in the 1770s and 1780s. It explores the influential theory of Alexis de Tocqueville that clergymen, nobles, and well-to-do commoners developed an egalitarian political culture, as the administrative centralization of the monarchy leveled the traditional authorities into a society of individuals similar to one another in their subjection to the state. My initial research, on the correspondence of the controller general with regard to the establishment of the assemblies, shows that nobles remained attached to the traditional laws upholding their property rights to offices, seigneuries, titles, ranks, benefices, etc. The monarchy weighted the provincial assemblies heavily in favor of bishops, lineage nobles, office holders and urban elites. These upper-class groups nevertheless objected to assemblies capable of supplanting their exclusive rights. My research indicates that the monarchy was far more archaic than many scholars currently suppose. It suggests that the Revolution was a truly radical event, replacing the conservative culture sustained by the laws and traditions of the monarchy with a new regime of civic equality. sjmiller@uab.edu (3/07)

THE REBELLION AND WAR OF THE CAMISARDS, 1685-1715
W. Gregory Monahan
Professor of History, Eastern Oregon University

My work is a history of the rebellion and war fought mostly in the mountains of the Cévennes and plains of the Vaunage in southern France from the summer of 1702 through 1704, though there were violent outbreaks before that date and recurrences afterwards. I concentrate on the interactions and lack thereof between a state which was itself still dominated by patron-client relationships and conflicts between and among its principals, and an increasingly desperate Protestant population suffused with apocalyptic prophetism and profoundly guilty at its forced abjuration in 1685. My work is based on archival research in Paris, Montpellier, Nîmes, Mende, Aix, Montauban, Cahors, Geneva, Lausanne, and London as well as an extraordinary wealth of published memoirs, letters, chronicles and a lively secondary literature, much of it inextricably bound to the confessional disputes that have raged in France for the last three centuries.  gmonahan@eou.edu    (7/05)

LES ELITES URBAINES DE SAINT-DOMINGUE DANS LA SECONDE MOITIE DU XVIIIe SIECLE : LA PLACE DES ADMINISTRATEURS COLONIAUX (1763-1792).
Zélie Navarro-Andraud, docteur de l’Université de Toulouse, Toulouse II-Le Mirail.
Directeur de thèse: Michel Bertrand ; Co-directeur: Michel Taillefer

Cette thèse brosse le tableau de la haute administration coloniale, en place à Saint-Domingue, dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle. Cependant, bien qu’une première partie défini précisément la hiérarchie administrative et fait état des attributions dévolues à chaque poste, les présents travaux ne s’inscrivent pas dans la voie de l’histoire des institutions. En effet, la démarche scientifique adoptée relève de l’histoire sociale. C’est ainsi que l’analyse prosopographique du groupe socioprofessionnel des administrateurs coloniaux révèle, non pas un corps monolithique, mais une entité parcourue de nombreuses failles. L’hétérogénéité professionnelle, sociale, géographique et culturelle des individus en fait un groupe complexe.  Le deuxième élément d’importance, que met en lumière l’analyse, est l’appartenance des administrateurs tant à l’élite urbaine française qu’à l’élite dominguoise. La mise en évidence de l’existence d’une échelle sociale propre au monde colonial et sa comparaison avec celle usitée en France permet de distinguer les divers marqueurs sociaux constitutifs de « l’élite ». Cependant, il apparaît que le service des colonies infléchi invariablement la mobilité sociale des hommes, ascendante ou descendante, comme les trajectoires individuelles.  Enfin, le troisième élément souligné, est l’existence d’une ligne de fracture identitaire scindant le groupe. Une analyse en trois temps divise ce dernier entre métropolitains, créoles et individus se situant dans l’entre-deux. Il s’agit alors de démontrer la diversité culturelle et identitaire du groupe dont une partie semble crispée sur son origine métropolitaine tandis qu’une autre initie un processus de créolisation aboutissant à une acculturation originale, produit d’un syncrétisme propre au monde antillais.  zelie.navarro@free.fr   (4/08)

THE FRENCH ROYAL ENTRY CEREMONY, 1400-1560
Neil Murphy, PhD Cand. University of Glasgow
Director: Dr. Graeme Small

My research investigates the development of the royal entry ceremony in fifteenth and sixteenth century France from the perspective of the towns that produced the spectacle. Though urban groups actively designed, staged and financed these ceremonies, the place of the townspeople have received considerably less attention than the kings who happened to take part in them.   This perspective stems from the sources that have been used by historians.  For the most part, they have made use of chronicles, printed accounts of the entries sanctioned by and published at the behest of the crown, and descriptions of entries as witnessed by people riding in the royal entourage.   These documents give us good descriptions of the pageantry, but are less useful for understanding the motivations, aims and aspirations of the townspeople who produced the spectacle.   My main sources of inquiry are the registers of municipal deliberations and financial town accounts, which record the particulars of the preparations made for the entry.    By use of these documents this thesis will probe the social realities that lay behind the carefully crafted performance of the ceremony. neilwmurphy@gmail.com   (2/07)

 
EARLY MODERN MILITARY CULTURE: CONTESTING VAUBANIAN SIEGECRAFT IN THE 18TH CENTURY
Jamel M. Ostwald, Ph.D. (2002)
Assistant Professor, Eastern Connecticut State University
Dissertation Committee: John Rule, John Guilmartin, John Lynn, Geoffrey Parker (Ohio State University).

My research interests focus on western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly during the age of Louis XIV. My dissertation analyzes the European-wide legacy of siegecraft left by Monsieur Vauban, part of a planned broader analysis of military culture and the conventions of warfare. It contrasts the decisive mindset of many military commanders with the Enlightened form of warfare championed by military engineers such as Vauban, and is currently being revised for publication with Brill Academic Publishers. In addition to these topics, I am also interested in the use of computers in historical methodology and research, as well as quantitative history. I maintain my own web pages at www.ostwald.hispeed.com including a lengthy discussion of my note-management database, as well as a collaborative website dedicated to research on early modern military history. jostwald@gmu.edu (1/06).


WOMEN, SLAVERY AND FAMILY RELATIONS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE
Jennifer Palmer, ABD University of Michigan (History and Women's Studies Joint Ph.D)
Dissertation Advisor: Dena Goodman

My dissertation interrogates how French people on French soil constructed and participated in slavery, using the port town of La Rochelle as a case study. In spite of slavery’s dubious legality, during the eighteenth century slaves lived in France. Drawing on visual and archival sources, I explore the tension between two representations of slavery: slaves as the ultimate luxury goods, and slaves as community members embedded in networks of kinship, friendship, and patronage. Ties of blood, godparentage, and common roots in the colonies tied slaves and their masters together. I argue that family relations, more than sex or domination, defined relationships between blacks and whites; consequently, even French people who did not own slaves themselves were implicated in the project of slavery. I draw on feminist theories of intersectionality to interrogate how the coexistence of various identities shaped the institution and practice of slavery. Women, often conceptualized as isolated from the slave trade and slavery, took active roles in the practice through their business and personal letters. Black women, frequently depicted as abused sexual victims or lascivious temptresses, occupied privileged positions as daughters of wealthy merchants. Through a narrative of family relations with a subtext of visual representations, I consider how the ever-changing conceptions and practices of slavery were shaped and defined in France, not only in the colonies. In doing so, I conceptualize slavery as central to French people’s understanding of family and self. Palmerjl97@aol.com    (1/06)

Money and Governance in France, 1550-1610
Jotham Parsons, Ph. D. (1997)
Assistant Professor of History, Duquesne University

I am engaged in research on the ways in which governing bodies and society at large attempted to understand and control money in the second half of the sixteenth century. Based on the archives of the Cour des monnaies (AN Z1B), royal legislation, municipal government records, pamphlets and so on, this study seeks to trace reactions to the growing importance of money and coinage in an age of inflation and rapid commercial growth. I am particularly interested in the ways in which debate and legislation over monetary policy revealed and shaped the emerging understanding of the “modern,” rational and national state, as well as the way social and governmental practices sought to control money’s disruptive effects on what was supposed to be a fixed order of social and political status. I have recently published a book entitled The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France (Catholic University of America Press, 2004), and I have also written on the history of political thought and of political institutions. Web page: www.home.duq.edu/~parsonsj email: parsonsj@duq.edu (1/06)


ANOTHER ELIZABETH: THE WORKS AND WORLDS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH OF FRANCE, ARCHDUCHESS OF AUSTRIA
Joseph F. Patrouch (Ph.D UC Berkeley 1991)
Associate Professor, Florida International University

[2006 statement]: My current project is a book-length manuscript centering on the life and contexts of the queen of France Elizabeth of Habsburg (1554-1592). This archduchess married Charles IX in 1570 and was consecrated at St. Denis in March, 1571. She ruled as queen until the death of her husband in 1574, giving birth to a daughter, Marie Isabelle, in 1572. She returned to central Europe in early 1576 and was active first at the famous imperial court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague and then at the archducal court in the central European Habsburgs’ secondary residence city, Vienna. There Dowager Queen Elizabeth established an important religious house, the Queen’s Cloister....This study seeks to place an analysis of Elizabeth into the general fields of the study of early modern queenship, patronage, and courts. It will also interact with scholarship on Renaissance festivals, international diplomacy, urban history, and convent studies, as well as with the broader scholarship on the Counter-Reformation.  [Update 2008]: I have completed a manuscript on Archduchess Elizabeth, but it only covers her childhood up until she is betrothed to Charles IX (ie 1554-1569). The manuscript is currently under review for publication by Brill. It developed into a more in-depth analysis of the female court in Vienna and the relationship between Elizabeth and her mother, the empress-queen Maria (Phillip II of Spain's sister).  patrouch@fiu.edu   (6/08)

LETTERS AND BIOGRAPHY OF FRANÇOIS DE CALLIERES
Laurence Pope
Independent scholar living in Portland, Maine

With the collaboration of Professor William S. Brooks of the University of Bath, I recently published Letters (1694-1700) of François de Callières to the Marquise d'Huxelles (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004). Callières was an envoy for Louis XIV, and later his principal private secretary. Most of the seventy-five letters in the book were written while Callières was in Holland negotiating what became the Treaty of Ryswick (1697). The manuscript is in the BnF, MS Fr. 24983.

The letters provide insight into the thought of a little understood figure in pre-Enlightenment France. An admirer of the Dutch Republic, Callières told his fellow negotiators at Ryswick that "we must make peace, for we can no longer make war." In his youth, he had traveled to Poland to advance the election as King of the young duc de Longueville, the younger son of the heroine of the Fronde. Towards the end of his life, as the principal secretary to the King with close connections to the duc de Chevreuse and Saint-Simon, he recommended a policy of sacrificing Bourbon dynastic interests in Spain. After the death of Louis XIV he published the celebrated De la manière de négocier avec les souverains. Callières's letters provide evidence that many elements of Enlightenment thought had already penetrated deeply into French political society by the 1690's. They suggest that the role of the opinion-makers gathered around Huxelles in Paris has not been fully taken into account by a Versailles-centered historiography. I am currently at work on a biography of Callières. lepope@mac.com   (7/05)

ABSOLUTISM AND PROVINCIAL ESTATES UNDER LOUIS XIII
Mark Potter, Ph.D (1997)
Assistant Professor, University of Wyoming
Dissertation directors: Geoffrey Symcox and Robert Brenner

I am beginning a new book project that examines local responses to the crown’s “attack” against provincial estates in the late 1620s and early 1630s and the divergent outcomes in different provinces. Focusing on developments in Normandy, Dauphiné, Provence, and Burgundy, I attempt to explain why estates disappeared in some provinces while they survived in others where they went on to play enhanced political and financial roles later in the century. This follows upon the publication of my first book, Corps and Clienteles: Public Finance and Political Change in France, 1688-1715 (Ashgate, 2004), which studies Louis XIV’s financial strategies and their impact on absolutism. Traditional theories of political change tend to view warfare as a catalyst for the rise of modern states, as monarchs claimed enhanced fiscal authority and swept away traditional constraints on their power. Revisionist scholars of absolutism, however, counter such a view with arguments that seventeenth-century kings were constrained in their options and that they governed best when upholding the interests of elites. Here, I square these differing views by investigating the negotiations over the strategies to finance Louis XIV’s wars, and I find that political change issued from this period in ways not captured by either school of thought. Louis XIV not only upheld the property and interests of elites, but by borrowing through the intermediation of privileged corps, he brought forth an unintended devolution of power toward provincial corps, especially toward provincial estates that showed themselves particularly effective in borrowing for the crown.   MPotter@uwyo.edu   (1/04)


MAGISTRATES AND MUNICIPAL POLITICS: THE PARLEMENT OF BORDEAUX DURING THE REIGN OF LOUIS XIV
Douglas Powell, ABD
Director: William Beik, Emory University

My dissertation will examine the actions of the Parlement of Bordeaux during the reign of Louis XIV, with special emphasis on the court’s relationship with the crown and surrounding community. My focus will be on the formation of a parlementaire mentality, and how that mentality was influenced by the social structures of urban life, the demands of the crown, and the parlementaires own political and economic self-interest. The Parlement openly revolted against Louis on two different occasions during his reign, and these conflicts produced a dialogue about provincial governance that will provide a context for examining these issues. One of the goals of this project will be to understand how the Parlement of Bordeaux emerged from Louis’s reign and became a key political institution during the upheavals of the eighteenth century. This means detailing the effects that specific royal decisions had on the court (such as its exile from 1675-1690), in addition to examining changes in the parlementaires’ use of language and symbolic power. dcpowel@emory.edu (1/04)

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: RACE, POLITICS, SOCIABILITY AND THE WORLD OF GENS DE COULEUR IN NANTES, 1664-1848
Dwain C. Pruitt, PhD (2005)
Assistant Professor, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN
Dissertation Director: Judith Miller, Emory University

My dissertation focuses on the lived experiences of a French community of persons of color during the height of the slave trade and the abolitionist movement. Using parish registers, police records, census reports and other contemporary literary sources, this project seeks to reconstruct as much as possible elements of Nantes' community of blacks and persons of mixed racial heritage and to ascertain how race, a subject much debated in the course of the Enlightenment and on into the nineteenth century, was lived "on the ground." My research interests include: the study of race as an ideological construct in European thought in general and French thought in particular; France's early contacts with the Maghreb and the Far East; and the French slave trade. dpruitt@rhodes.edu (2/06)

Continue listings: A-B, C-D E-H R-Z