Research Projects R-Z
(by author)
CATHOLIC PROPAGANDA AND PROTESTANT
IDENTITY DURING THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION
Luc Racaut, PhD (1999)
Lecturer in History at the University of Newcastle
Dissertation supervisor: Prof. Andrew Pettegree, (St Andrews Reformation Studies
Institute).
This book deals with the printed polemic of the French Wars of Religion and its
relationship with identity and opinion forming. It explores the world of Catholic
vernacular printing which sheds light on the enduring strength and popularity
of Catholicism in sixteenth century France. The medium of printing has been persistently
associated with Protestantism. As a result, a large body of French Catholic anti-Protestant
material was to a large extent ignored. In contrast with Germany, there is evidence
to suggest that French authors used printing effectively and aggressively to
promote the Catholic cause. During the French Wars of Religion, French Catholics
were far more innovative than they were given credit for. Catholic polemical
works, and their portrayal of Protestants in print in particular, is the central
focus of this work. Rather than confront the Reformation on its own terms, the
Catholic reaction concentrated on discrediting the Protestant cause in the eyes
of the Catholic majority. This study provides an example of the successful defence
of Catholicism developed independently and in advance of Tridentine reform which
is of wider significance for the history of the Reformation in Europe. Luc.Racaut@newcastle.ac.uk (2/04)
OF LAW, SOCIETY, AND JUSTICE: THE JUDICIAL PRACTICES OF THE MAGISTRATES OF
THE PARLEMENT DE TOULOUSE (1550-1700)
Guillaume Ratel, Ph.D. candidate (ABD)
Advisers: Prof. Steven L. Kaplan, Cornell
University / Prof. Robert Descimon, EHESS (cotutelle de these)
M
y research opens fresh perspectives on the relationship between law and society
by focusing on the professional practices of a group of early modern magistrates.
To achieve that goal, my dissertation will combine a detailed ethnography of
the magistrates of an early modern French provincial court—the Parlement
de Toulouse—with an analysis of actual judicial practices as reflected
in the rich and diverse documents (arrêts, enquêtes, sacs-à-procès)
this court fabricated between 1550 and 1700. By bringing together my study of
the magistrates of the Parlement de Toulouse, of their social and mental
universe, and my analysis of their professional practices, I intend to show that
judicial practices constitute an essential element in the “crafting” of
both law and society, and demonstrate that the “judicial epistemology” these
practices entail, far from being simply derived from pure and autonomous ideas
about law and justice, are rooted in the dealings judges—a specific social,
political, and intellectual elite—have with the rest of society, as manifested
through its daily conflicts. Thus, this dissertation seeks to demonstrate how,
and with what legal and social consequences, judges—a numerically modest
group within most societies—attempt, successfully or not, to appropriate
a major instrument of social regulation by laying exclusive claims on the practical
management of law. gr37@cornell.edu (9/06)
URBAN CULTURE IN ROUEN, 1486-1654
Dylan Reid, M.Litt (1995) Fellow,
Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (University of Toronto)
Supervisor: Robin Briggs (Oxford)
My research deals with the cultural history of Rouen in the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries. My primary focus is on public or communal events, the
institutions that supported them, and the individuals who participated in them.
The most notable of these events were carnival, and a series of poetry contests
organized by confraternities. I also look at civic processions, royal entries,
printing, etc. The overall issue I address is the nature of cultural life
in
an urban community. Within that subject, I address several questions, notably
the dynamics between popular and elite culture; the dynamics between provincial
and national culture; the nature and expression of civic pride and patriotism;
and the role of confraternities in urban culture. I argue that the similarities
in organization, themes and style between various forms of cultural activity
within the city suggest the presence of a specifically urban culture, grounded
in the particular environment and institutions of city life, which is distinct
from both rural popular culture and aristocratic/court elite culture. Inevitably,
my work overlaps the boundary between the history and literature, and I am
interested in the ways in which the two disciplines can intersect and complement
each other.
Because of the somewhat disparate nature of my material, I am publishing my
work as a series of articles with an underlying thematic coherence, which
I
hope to bring together in a book sometime in the future. dylan.reid@sympatico.ca (11/04)
A FOOL & HIS MONEY: CULTURE AND FINANCIAL CHOICE
DURING THE LAW AFFAIR OF 1720
Melinda Rice, Ph.D cand.
Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
In 1720, the first-ever Bank of France fell apart. Five years earlier the bank’s
innovator, John Law, had founded a system designed to rid the monarchy of its
pressing financial problems. Law’s Système would eventually encompass
taxation, government debt, and foreign trading companies. However, by 1720, speculation
on severely overvalued colonial enterprises in Mississippi, combined with a continuing
loss of faith in the new paper currency, resulted in a chaotic end to Law’s
bank. My dissertation studies how individuals changed their investment patterns
in the years following the Law Affair, and the relationship between those economic
choices and the portrayal of financial matters in images and theatre. Histories
of the Law Affair have focused almost exclusively on the economic and political
aspects of the crisis. My project takes a different approach by examining the
role of artistic representation in economic change. The first part will look
at financial choices as preserved in the credit contracts drawn up by notaries.
The second part compares these investment patterns to the emerging public discourse
on money by analyzing how economic issues were presented on the Parisian stage
and in engravings. This project seeks to understand the spread of economics as
a field of study in its own right, one that provided people with a new mental
framework. What is the process by which changes in economic thinking occur? What
is the role of cultural production in that change? mrice@ucla.edu (7/05)
THE CONTENDING KINGDOMS: FRANCE AND ENGLAND 1420-1700.
Dr Glenn Richardson, Deputy Head, School of Theology, Philosophy, and History
St Mary's University College, Twickenham, London
My work is mainly on the reign of Francis I, Henry VIII and on Franco-English relations in the sixteenth century. I am also interested in Renaissance courts and the political and cultural interaction between them more generally. My most recent project is a collection of essays from Ashgate, The Contending Kingdoms: France and England 1420-1700. The book brings together ten scholars working on early-modern Franco-English relations. Based on papers from a 2004 conference marking the centenary of the signing of the Entente-Cordiale. The wide range of subjects, includes the book trade, the appointment of bishops, and parliamentary attitudes towards France. Contributors include Anne Curry on the 1420 treaty of Troyes; Robert J. Knecht comparing the French and English nobilities of the sixteenth century and Susan Doran on Elizabeth I's relations with Catherine de' Medici. My aim has been to revive interest in what has become a bit of a dry-as-dust area –namely diplomatic history and to fit 'foreign relations' in both countries into firmly domestic contexts. I am currently working on an oration delivered by the University of Paris to Mary Tudor when she married Louis XII in 1514 and on a new monograph on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. richardg@smuc.ac.uk (4/08)
THE SWORD THAT DIVIDES AND BONDS THAT
TIE: FAITH AND FAMILY IN THE FRENCH WARS OF RELIGION
Joshua Rosenthal, Ph.D. (2005),
Fulbright Fellowship
Director: Susan Karant-Nunn, Division for Late Medieval
and Reformation Studies, University of Arizona
This dissertation explores
the relationship between faith and family. The nobility's relationship with
religious pluralism is examined by focusing upon the Mornay, an extended
French noble family divided along confessional lines, which boasted Catholic
bishops and Huguenots including Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1549-1623) and
offered a rich collection of sources. Throughout the Middle Ages, family
members cooperated in order to advance their fortunes. In the sixteenth century,
however, religious division jeopardized this cooperation and threatened their
success. Most members remained Catholic but enough converted so that the
family was rendered spiritually bifurcated at every level. Members converted
for multiple reasons ranging from the theological to rank opportunism. Family
did not preserve religious unity but rather facilitated division as members acted
as advocates of their confessional parties and converted their relatives. When
members converted, they formed distinct religious communities within the family.
Members of each religious community followed traditional strategies that had
brought the family success, but they restricted these in order to benefit only
members of their own spiritual group. Each community faced particular challenges
and achieved different degrees of success. Members of each spiritual group occasionally
breached the confessional divide and cooperated with one another on a limited
basis but in various situations. Members negotiated the Edict of Nantes and created
a national platform for co-confessional existence that reflected their experiences
in the family. Family facilitated spiritual division, but the social structures
of kinship proved flexible enough to accommodate religious pluralism.
Website: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jrosenth/ jrosenth@email.arizona.edu (10/05)
FRENCH NOBLES AND RELIGIOUS CONFLICT AFTER THE EDICT
OF NANTES, 1598-1635
Brian Sandberg, (Ph.D. 2001)
N.E.H. Fellow at the Medici Archive Project in Florence, Italy.
Assistant Professor, Northern Illinois University (Fall 2006)
Directors John A. Lynn, Geoffrey Parker, and Paul W. Schroeder, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A book manuscript, currently in preparation, examines nobles’ participation
in religious violence and armed confrontation in southwestern France during
the latter phases of the French Wars of Religion. This study explores provincial
noble society, culture, and politics through the lens of nobles’ orchestration
of violence—proposing a new model of noble clientage practices and recasting
issues of confessional politics, religious violence, public/private, and power
in a pivotal period of French state development. I am also co-editing a collaborative
book project entitled, Violence, Religion et Modernité. De la Renaissance à nos
jours. I have published several articles and book chapters on aspects of cultural
history and confessional violence during the religious wars, including: “‘Generous
Amazons Came to the Breach’: Besieged Women in the French Wars of Religion,” Gender
and History 16 (November 2004): 654-688; “Beyond Encounters: Religion,
Ethnicity, and Violence in the Early Modern Atlantic World, 1450-1700,” Journal
of World History 17 (March 2006): 1-25; “‘The Magazine of All their
Pillaging’: Armies as Sites of Second-Hand Exchanges during the French
Wars of Religion,” in Echanges Alternatifs: Les marchés de l’occasion
XVI-XX, ed. Laurence Fontaine (in press); and “‘Only the Sack and
the Noose for its Citizens’: Atrocities against Civilians in the Wars
of Religion in Early Seventeenth-Century France,” in Collateral Damage:
Civilian Casualties, War and Empire (in press). Brian.Sandberg@iue.it or bsandberg@niu.edu (1/06)
PRINCES, POSTS, AND PARTISANS: THE ARMY OF LOUIS XIV AND PARTISAN WARFARE IN
THE NETHERLANDS
George Satterfield, Ph.D (2002) University of Illinois, 2002).
Assistant Professor, Morrisville State College (SUNY).
Dissertation Committee : John A. Lynn, Geoffrey Parker and Clare Crowston
My book Princes, Posts, and Partisans: The Army of Louis XIV and Partisan Warfare in the Netherlands (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003) explores the French army's use of partisan warfare in Louis XIV's conquest of the Spanish Netherlands. It discusses how partisan operations, such as fire-raids, forage expeditions, struggles over villages, fit within a larger strategy of exhaustion. French partisan warfare reflected the limits of the incomplete, absolute state. http://www.brill.nl/m_catalogue_sub6_id11377.htm
I am presently the editor for an encyclopedia of Early Modern Military History
(social and cultural, political and military aspects of war) for Brill and
I am accepting suggestions for entries (authors) and looking for some editorial
help. satterg@morrisville.edu (7/05)
GENDER, RACE AND SCIENCE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE: THE WORLD OF MARIE
LE MASSON-LE GOLFT
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (Ph.D., Stanford,
1998)
Associate Professor of History, California State University, San Marcos
Dissertation director: Keith Michael Baker
Like my previous work, this project uses a biographical
lens in order to understand multiple issues in late eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century French history. Its
focus is Marie LeMasson-LeGolft (1749 – 1826), a woman from Le Havre
who was a scientist and intellectual. The themes it will treat include:
gender, race and science in the Old Regime; gender and the French Revolution;
Enlightenment ideas of the Other; provincial intellectual culture in the
1780s; and the development of abolitionism in France. sepinwal@csusm.edu (12/05)
FESTIVALS, CALENDARS,
AND THE NATIONALIZATION OF TIME: FRANCE, 1642-1815.
Noah Shusterman, Ph.D (2005)
Lecturer in Temple University's Intellectual Heritage department.
Advisor: Peter Sahlins, University of California, Berkeley
Like other Catholic countries during the early modern period, daily life
in Old Regime France was characterized by a large number of religious holidays.
In the seventeenth century, 40 religious holidays, to go along with 52 Sundays,
was not uncommon. The number of such days varied from place to place, however.
Bishops had the right to determine which saints' days were "fêtes
chômées", when most forms of manual work was forbidden.
Yet despite the relative absence of pressure from the royal government, the
church
began to reduce the number of religious holidays; moreover, they did this
with an aim towards creating a uniform religious practice throughout France.
By
the
arrival of the Revolution, local religious calendars, especially in northern
France, were less diverse, and tended to have less than 20 annual holidays.
The Republican calendar attempted to dissociate the Catholic church from
the passage of time, and to eliminate episcopal control over when people
did and
did not work. But it can also be seen as a continuation of a trend toward
national, as opposed to local rhythms, as well as part of the continued
increase in the
number of days available to economic activities. Those trends continued under
Napoleon, whose reinstatement of the Gregorian calendar was accompanied by
the
suppression of all but 4 religious holidays (Sundays excepted), the observance
of which was common to all of France, although not to all parts of the Empire. shusterman@free.fr (9/05)
THE FRENCH COUNCIL OF COMMERCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE,
1700-1750
David Kammerling Smith, Associate Professor of History, Eastern Illinois
University,
Editor-in-Chief , H-France.
My work investigates the emergence of the administrative
state and its effect on the practices and language of economic policymaking.
Focusing
on the Council/Bureau
of Commerce between 1700 and 1750, I argue that as the French Council of Commerce
established an administrative system to organize French economic policies in
the early 1700s--a system that established regularized and standardized procedures--the
Council opened itself to negotiation with, and influence from, France's commercial
and manufacturing classes as discussions over policy issues occurred between
royal officials and those whose economic activity they sought to regulate.
Merchants, manufacturers, and artisans from across France developed a series
of political skills and practices in order to act effectively in this new political
environment. As discussions and debates developed in the Council of Commerce
during the 1720s through 1740s, the traditional statist language that provided
the framework for economic policymaking increasingly was challenged by a new
language of policymaking often used by the merchant and manufacturing classes
that emphasized a "localist" perspective strongly grounded in a vocabulary
of the public good. These changes in the language of economic policymaking
opened administrators to new rhetorical practices and facilitated the development
of a more abstracted language of the economy, based in a natural law tradition,
that would reinforce the state's goals of political centralization by justifying
the elimination of provincial and local economic privileges. cfdks@eiu.edu (2/04)
THREE BOOKS ON THE ABSOLUTIST ORIGINS
OF SECULAR CULTURE IN FRANCE
Jacob Soll, Ph.D (1998)
Associate Professor, Rutgers University, Camden
NEH Fellow 2005-06
My first book, Publishing The Prince: History, Reading, and the
Birth of Political Criticism (Michigan, 2005), focuses on a great but unstudied irony: how the
secular ideology of the Enlightenment grew out of an absolutist tradition of
historical criticism. It shows that the historical consciousness associated
with modernity was fostered and developed by divine right monarchs. The key
figure in understanding the cultural mechanisms that transformed absolutist
critical history into the secular political ideal of the Enlightenment is the
failed Venetian ambassadorial secretary and libertine print-shop corrector,
Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de La Houssaye (1634-1706). He worked and lived in the
royal print shop, translating and creating critical editions of Tacitus, Gasparo
Contarini, Machiavelli, Paolo Sarpi and Balthasar Gracián.
As the recipient of an NEH Fellowship, I’m finishing a second book, The
Secret Sphere: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s State Information System, which
shows how Colbert supplanted the last French court humanist, Gabriel Naudé as
the head of the state library and culture apparatus. As the public sphere of
information grew through the international Republic of Letters, Colbert not
only tried to control it with his censorship campaign, but also hired international
scholars, and worked to subjugate once independent literary figures and the
great scholars of the magistracy. His ambitious policy library changed the
very essence of formal knowledge. Finally, my third book, The Enlightenment
Library and the Quest for Universal Knowledge, is with readers at Yale University
Press. soll@crab.rutgers.edu (1/06 )
UNE SOCIÉTÉ DANS LA GUERRE CIVILE.
LE MIDI TOULOUSAIN AU TEMPS DES TROUBLES DE RELIGION (1562-1596)
Pierre-Jean Souriac, Docteur de l'Université de Paris IV -
Sorbonne.
Directeur de thèse : Monsieur le professeur Denis Crouzet
L'objectif de cette thèse (soutenue
le 6 décembre 2003) est d'aborder la guerre non pas comme le produit
d'une institution militaire, mais comme le produit d'une mobilisation locale
liée au contexte très particulier des guerres civiles françaises
qui virent s'affronter catholiques et protestants entre 1562 et 1598. Le
territoire étudié est centré sur la ville de Toulouse,
citadelle d'un catholicisme intransigeant confronté à de virulentes
places protestantes (Montauban, Castres, pays de Foix) : ces profondes fractures
confessionnelles sont autant d'espaces d'affrontement ou du moins de mise
en défense de la région. Les institutions locales, tant du
côté catholique que du côté protestant, furent
mises à contribution du point de vue financier, mais aussi matériel
et humain, dans l'établissement d'une économie de guerre locale.
Etats provinciaux et diocèses civils (Comminges, Languedoc), mais
aussi municipalités furent les acteurs principaux de ces guerres car
ils permirent aux chefs militaires d'entretenir des armées, aux effectifs
limités, mais provoquant un climat permanent d'instabilité.
Les sources de ces institutions s'avèrent alors très précieuses,
car elles se font l'écho au quotidien de la guerre, tant par les craintes
qu'elle suscita que par les moyens financiers qu'elle 22exigea. Comptabilités,
délibérations ou revues de troupes sont les sources émanant
pour la plupart de ces instances locales que cette thèse va tenter
d'exploiter. Trois axes de recherche ont structuré cette démarche
: le problème des décideurs de la guerre, le problème
de l'art de la guerre à l'échelle locale, le problème
de l'enracinement de l'effort de guerre. pj.souriac@wanadoo.fr (1/04)
PERSECUTION, RESISTANCE
AND THE SLOW GROWTH OF TOLERATION IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE
Brian E. Strayer, Ph.D (1987)
Pr2ofessor of History, Andrews University
Director: Allan Megill, University of Iowa
I recently published Huguenots and Camisards as Aliens in France, 1598-1789 (Edwin
Mellen Press, 2001) and Bellicose
Dove: Claude Brousson and Huguenot Resistance to Louis XIV, 1647-1698.
(Brighton, England: Sussex Academic Press, 2003). The former examines the
interaction of Church and State from Henri
IV to Louis XVI, highlighting the slow growth of religious toleration amidst
recurrent persecution, analyzing dozens of previously unknown primary sources
(pamphlets, books) for and against religious toleration and all the major
edicts, declarations and laws regarding the Huguenots. The latter is a
biography of Huguenot lawyer-pastor-martyr Claude Bro22usson, his education,
anti-Catholic
rhetoric, missionary journeys back into France after 1685, and a close
examination of all his major and minor works. No biography of Brousson
in English has
appeared in 150 years, so it is time for a revisionist look at his life,
ideals, and advocacy of civil disobedience under Louis XIV. I am currently
working on a companion book on the Jansenists and Convulsionnaires in 17th
and 18th century France with similar themes of persecution, resistance,
and
the slow growth of toleration: "Suffering Saints:
Jansenists and Convulsionnaires in France, 1620-1789." bstrayer@andrews.edu (9/05)
CHIVALRY AND WARFARE IN FRANCE, 1350-1450.
Dr Craig Taylor, Lecturer in Medieval History
University of York, England
Modern scholars often imply that there was one single medieval view of chivalry.
The central argument of this book is that textual sources bear witness to unceasing
debates about these issues, which cannot be distilled down into simple, universally
accepted ideologies. In late medieval France, there was an evolving, 'official'
Valois view, built upon Roman models of public obedience and discipline. Circumstances
impelled writers employed by the crown to emphasise a model for chivalric behaviour
that was built upon obedience to public authority and discipline. They echoed
and justified wider developments in military recruitment and organization as
feudal armies mutated into more professional military forces, together with the
increasing recognition of the state's monopoly on the use of violence. Nevertheless,
we cannot simply assume that the views of writers embodied the attitudes of the
professionals who lived the chivalric code. Understanding these debates over
war and chivalry will enable military and political historians to avoid the anachronistic
assumption that medieval society approached such subjects in simple ways, as
defined solely by theological arguments or the models created in chivalric romance.
The history of the Hundred Years War cannot be written without understanding
the fundamental paradigms that shaped the narratives offered by contemporary
chroniclers and commentators, and may certainly provided the framework within
which warriors understood warfare and chivalry. cdt1@york.ac.uk (3/07)
CHER ESPOIR DE LA NATION SAINTE: THE MAISON
ROYALE DE SAINT LOUIS AT SAINT-CYR
Karen L. Taylor, Ph.D (2000)
Sidwell Friends School/Georgetown University
Dissertation Director: James Collins, Georgetown
My dissertation analyzes the philosophy and structure of the Maison Royale de Saint Louis at Saint-Cyr, a French school for noble girls, founded in 1689 by Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon. It examines the state’s view of women’s education and the intellectual and social climate that permitted an education for women. I analyze the movement to educate women in the eighteenth century within the context of state building, as Saint-Cyr, however inadvertently, created a female intellectual milieu that nourished the Enlightenment and Romanticism and transformed the role of women. My research demonstrates some of the ways in which this institution encouraged the participation of women in public and political space.
In revising the dissertation for publication, I discuss the
elements of the traditional values of the provincial French nobility, particularly
the way
in which they were articulated by Agrippa d’Aubigné, Madame de
Maintenon’s grandfather. I examine this core of values as it runs through
the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, first via the channel of
Catholic Reformation piety (Fénelon, for example), which is reflected
later in an adjusted form in Rousseau. The book will expands the coverage of
Saint-Cyr’s influence and its ties to elements of the education of girls
in eighteenth-century France and beyond. This project explores questions relating
to women and gender as well as the culture of the provincial nobility in the
eighteenth century. taylork@sidwell.edu (1/05)
CARDINAL RICHELIEU, CHANCELLOR OXENSTIERNA AND COMMERCE.
Erik Thomson, (Ph.D. 2005),
Harper Fellow and Collegiate Assistant Professor, University of Chicago.
Director, Orest Ranum, Johns Hopkins University.
I compared the place of commerce in Swedish
and French political cultures during the first half of the seventeenth century.
Intellectual and
institutional
innovations spawned during the Dutch war against Spain forced statesmen across
Europe to reconsider the relations between sovereignty and trade. In France,
I focus upon the commercial beliefs and activities of Cardinal Richelieu and
his circle. I suggest that it is more useful to see commerce as a meeting point
of many different intellectual languages such as natural and local law, theology,
and moral and political philosophy, than as a stable discipline. I examine
the place of commercial news in the correspondence and practices of diplomats,
the pleading and plans of projectors, and the specialized consultations of
experts on the coinage. Richelieu’s commercial engagement was deeply
engaged in his concern for the proper relations between sovereign states, as
well as the personal acquisition of wealth. The Cardinal viewed the combination
of such local techniques of power and the use of reason as necessary to survive
in a corrupt world. In such a comparatively rigid political culture, both reason
and such political techniques proved of only relatively limited use. ethomson@uchicago.edu (2/06)
FROM DESTRIER TO DANSEUR: THE ROLE OF THE HORSE IN EARLY MODERN FRENCH NOBLE
IDENTITY
Treva J. Tucker, ABD
University of Southern California
Advisors: A. Lloyd Moote, USC Emeritus; Paul W. Knoll, USC; Kristen Neuschel,
Duke.
My research focuses on the social and cultural uses which the sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century French nobility made of various types of
horsemanship in
various contexts (warfare, education, ceremony and spectacle, etc.).
I am trained both as a historian and a horseperson, so this research
is uniquely
informed
by my knowledge of horses in general and of classical equitation
in particular. My dissertation addresses the ways in which the traditional
nobility
manipulated the familiar attribute of horsemanship by adopting a
new
riding style—classical
equitation—as one crucial way of easing its transition from an identity
revolving around the chivalric warrior virtues of the medieval knight
to one revolving
around the courtly virtues of early modern civility and politesse.
By analyzing contemporary treatises on the nobility, contemporary
manuals of horsemanship, and the secondary literature on the nobility
and its situation during this period, I conclude that horsemanship
served a far more important role in shaping noble mentalité and definition than previously realized. In addition to
the dissertation, I also am working on several shorter projects which
explore other aspects of the relationship between noble culture and
identity and
various types of mounted display. My work contributes to the existing
literature on
the nobility’s collective identity and self-perception during a key
period of transition, and it does so by exploring an aspect of noble
activity
which has
received very little exposure prior to this time and none at all
from an academic historian with an in-depth knowledge of horses.
(1/05) tjtucker@usc.edu
THAT MEN WOULD PRAISE THE LORD: THE TRIUMPH OF PROTESTANTISM IN NIMES, 1530-1570
Allan Tulchin, Ph.D (2000)
Advisor: William H. Sewell, Jr (emeritus, University of Chicago).
My book ms. uses the case of Nimes, one of the most important Protestant towns in France, to examine the growth of the Protestant movement in France. In addition to town and church records, I created a database of all 1750 surviving Nimes wills and marriage contracts from 1550-1563 to develop a comprehensive sociological picture of Nimes society; changing religious formulas also help chart the religious shifts in the town. I showed that early Protestants in Nimes were drawn from a wide spectrum of society, but biased towards merchants and clothworkers. The movement was successful, however, in expanding to the more prestigious groups of lawyers and officials in the early 1560s. This was crucial to Protestantism's success, since these groups were the most powerful members of the city's governing class. The Protestant movement was able to attract these powerful figures because it succeeded in linking its program to broader issues of political reform, which gained urgency in the later 1550s and early 1560s as the town suffered a succession of political and economic crises. I also undertook a study of the 250 most important families in Nimes, and determined that family relationships and factions were also crucial to the movement's success. So my book touches on urban and social history as well as religious history. I have also published two prize-winning articles recently: "The Michelade in Nimes, 1567," French Historical Studies (2006), and "Same-Sex Couples Creating Households in Old Regime France: The Uses of the Affrerement," Journal of Modern History (2007). Email: atulchin@verizon.net (6/08)
LE PROMENEUR À PARIS AU XVIIIe
SIÈCLE : CONSTRUCTION D’UNE
FIGURE SOCIALE.
Laurent Turcot. chercheur post-doctoral à l'Université du Québec à Montréal.
Directeur, Arlette Farge, EHESS
Thèse: Le Promeneur à Paris au XVIIIe siècle: construction d’une figure sociale. (Paris, EHESS, 2005), 675 p. (sous la dir. d'Arlette Farge). Sujet: Histoire du pied, Médecine, Histoire des loisirs en Europe. Résumé: Au début du XVIIe siècle, se pratique dans la société parisienne une promenade dite « honnête ». Réservée à l’élite, elle est, conformément à la civilité, un rituel de sociabilité mondaine. Se promener sert à « voir », mais surtout à « se faire voir ». Cependant, à la fin du siècle, de nombreux bouleversements vont mener à la « fabrication » d’une nouvelle forme de promenade qui, délaissant les impératifs de la civilité moderne, se caractérise par l’individualisation et la subjectivation du rapport à la ville. Cette transformation de l’appréciation et de l’appréhension de la Cité est rendue possible par la constitution d’une figure sociale qui va exprimer et définir cette nouvelle manière de se promener : le promeneur urbain. Laurent.Turcot@hst.ulaval.ca
POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE SAVOYARD LANDS, CA.
1536-1580
Matthew Vester, Ph.D (1997)
Associate Professor of History, West Virginia University
Dissertation director: Geoffrey Symcox, UCLA.
I am interested in a history of politics that doesn't take the state for granted, and that makes arguments about structures of political interactions and tools of territorial control. The empirical context of my research has been the restoration of the Savoyard lands to Duke Emanuel Filibert following the peace of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559, and my research methods have been microanalytic. I have worked on the operation and political role of a major tax farm, the Nice-Piedmont salt gabelle,and on the clergy assembly of Bresse and its role in fiscal politics. My book on the dynastic role played within and without the Savoyard domains by Jacques de Savoie-Nemours (the duke's cousin), and by the institutions and elites of his apanage of the Genevois was published in French by Droz in June 2008. I'm currently working on two book manuscripts: a close study of a violent border conflict between a vassal of Emanuel Filibert in southern Piedmont, his subjects from the village of Ormea, and the notables and villagers of the Ligurian town of Pieve di Teco (itself subject to the Republic of Genoa), and a study of late renaissance political culture in the Vallée d’Aoste (much of which focuses on kinship and property-holding in the community of St Vincent). Matt.Vester@mail.wvu.edu (7/08)
COMMUNICATING LA CHOSE PUBLIQUE: PEASANTS, NEWS AND THE EARLY
MODERN FRENCH STATE.
Jill Maciak Walshaw, Ph.D (2003)
S.S.H.R.C. Postdoctoral Fellow, Université de Montréal, Canada.
Director: Alan Forrest, University of York, U.K.
My dissertation, which I am currently revising
for publication as a book, investigates how political information was communicated
in rural
France in
the eighteenth century and during the French Revolution. Early modern peasant
society is often portrayed as isolated from the current of events, due to factors
such as poor-quality roads, an inefficient postal service and illiteracy. However,
if we reconsider this isolation from the perspective of how information was
disseminated in the countryside, we see that rural municipal councils were
in fact overwhelmed with official material. Moreover, widespread illiteracy
did not restrict the spread of information: literate intermediaries read texts
aloud, and oral communication networks provided daily opportunities to gather
news and exchange ideas. Although authorities feared that peasants were ignorant
and easily “led astray”, peasant testimony in sedition trials allows
us to “eavesdrop” on conversations which took place in villages
and market towns two centuries ago, revealing that in fact, peasants understood
much about politics, and they formed intelligent opinions on current issues.
Based on my evidence for south-west France, I argue that peasants were “politicized” long
before the nineteenth century, and that the Habermasian “public sphere” should
be enlarged to include rural society. My book manuscript expands upon this
research to address the early modern period in greater detail, including a
discussion of the ubiquitous “agent” or “intermediary” in
rural society and an investigation of how much the monarchy’s attempt
to control public opinion, demonstrated by Arlette Farge and others for Paris,
also extended into the countryside. jill.maciak@umontreal.ca (2/05)
IDENTITÉS RELIGIEUSES ET INTÉGRATION À LA
SOCIÉTÉ AMBIANTE;
PROTESTANTISMES ET ABSOLUTISME; LA CONSTRUCTION DU MOI À LA RENAISSSANCE
ET LA CONSTITUTION DU SUJET MODERNE
Thierry Wanegffelen
Professeur d'Histoire de la Première Modernité
Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail (Toulouse 2)
Pour différencier l’appartenance aux groupes religieux de l’adhésion à leurs systèmes d’orthodoxie respectifs, et parvenir à en préciser les diverses modalités, Thierry Wanegffelen a choisi d’adopter une perspective alliant histoire, anthropologie et théologie. Il étudie aujourd’hui plus précisément la manière dont les communautés réformées françaises ont vécu, de la Réforme à la République, la tension résultant, de la double nécessité d’affirmation identitaire et d’intégration à la société ambiante. Son travail personnel s’accompagne de trois projets collectifs en cours et auxquels les chercheurs intéressés sont invités à prendre part : (1) l‘édition des Lettres françaises adressées au XVIe siècle à l’Eglise réformée de Genève ; (2) le programme « Protestantismes et absolutisme », en collaboration avec Bernard Bourdin, issu du séminaire « Lectures théologico-politiques, XVIe-XVIIe siècles » du Centre d‘Études du Saulchoir (Paris) ; (3) en collaboration avec Annie Noblesse-Rocher d’une enquête collective sur Strasbourg aux origines de la Réforme française.
TW étudie aussi la construction du moi à la Renaissance et la constitution du sujet moderne dans sa double dimension de soumission à des pressions sociales, politiques, religieuses, culturelles, éthiques et communautaires accrues, mais aussi de mise en œuvre d’un espace interne d’autonomie, le for intérieur, instance ultime du libre arbitre. L’ambivalence de la modernité doit ainsi être soulignée. Cela permet de faire l’économie d’une herméneutique compliquée cherchant à opposer à la modernité normalisatrice, enrégimentante et coercitive, une prétendue et improbable post-modernité, libératrice et relativiste, à la définition toujours partielle et à la description inévitablement incomplète.
Par ailleurs TW a inauguré en 2005
avec la publication aux éditions
Payot de Catherine de Médicis. Le pouvoir au féminin une étude
portant sur l’anthropologie du pouvoir féminin dans l’Europe
de la Renaissance. wanegffelen@wanadoo.fr (3/07)
ANTOINE WATTEAU AND
THE CULTURAL VALUE OF DRAWING IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FRANCE, also BRITISH
TEXTILE DESIGN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Dr. Alicia Weisberg-Roberts, Art Historian, PhD (2005)
Postdoctoral Research Associate,
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
At present my principal area of interest in the French eighteenth century relates
to my PhD thesis, Antoine Watteau and the Cultural Value of Drawing in Eighteenth
Century France (Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Dr. Katie Scott, supervisor;
awarded 2005), in which I examined Watteau's drawings and identity as a draughtsman
through the theory and practice of early eighteenth-century drawing, collecting
and connoisseurship. I am presently preparing sections of this for publication.
I am also currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Yale Center for
British Art, where I am engaged in curatorial and research activities relating
to Mary Delany, nee Granville(1700-1788). This is a continuation of my work on
textile design, botanicalism and the formation of taste in Britain, see the forthcoming, "Surprising
Oddness and Beauty: Textile Design and Natural History between London and Philadelphia
in the Eighteenth Century," in Amy Meyers ed. The Culture of Nature: Art and
Science in Philadelphia (Yale University Press, 2007). alicia.weisberg-roberts@yale.edu (10/06)
BETWEEN CROWN AND COMMERCE: ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM
IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BORDEAUX
Stephanie Whitlock, Ph.D. (2001)
Director of Programs, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Director: William H. Sewell Jr., University of Chicago
My dissertation was a study of urban planning and architectural development
in Bordeaux from the 1720s to the French Revolution which placed the port
city
in a national and international context to demonstrate how economic, political,
and social relationships were imprinted on the urban and rural environments.
I identified three interrelated influences that shaped the design of Bordeaux:
the French crown, the growth of international capitalist commerce, and the
rise
of a non-noble elite. The chapters examined construction along Bordeaux's riverside,
the creation of leisure spaces, suburban expansion, and vineyard development
to explore the relationship between central and provincial France and to demonstrate
how the monarchy used city building to represent itself in Bordeaux. I also
considered the economic, social, and natural limitations to the king's political
and symbolic authority over urban planning in Bordeaux: with the economy surging
beyond state control, the European and transatlantic exchange of commodities,
culture, and artistic styles left its own imprint on Bordeaux's urban and
rural
landscapes. Secondly, my study focused on how the participation of Bordeaux's
international wholesale merchants in urban planning both served and constrained
the royal building program. Examining merchants' sites of sociability and intellectual
exchange, the structure and use of their residences, their articulation of
occupational
identities, their pride in commerce, and their service to the city, I argued
that city planning in Bordeaux makes salient the fissures in the upper ranks
of eighteenth-century society. The thesis thus rethinks both Marxist and revisionist
interpretations of middle-class formation in eighteenth-century France. s-whitlock-11@ALUMNI.UCHICAGO.EDU (3/07)
ON THE URBAN EDGE IN FRANCE, 1000-1800 [WALLEDTOWNS]
Michael Wolfe, Ph.D. (1986 Johns Hopkins University)
Professor of History, Pennsylvania State University, Altoona
My current project concerns the evolution of walled towns in
France from the Middle Ages into the eighteenth century. The first half is
a synthetic analysis
and overview. Drawing on the vast secondary literature, it will focus on the
ways in which walled towns influenced regional development and public authority,
taking into account military technology, physical geography, and the networks
tying urban communities together. The book will have three parts. Part one
examines the Gallo-Roman legacy and the rise of walled towns from the tenth
century through the end of the Hundred Years' War. Part two will explore how
new forms of monarchical state authority and fortification design theories
from Italy shaped the bonnes villes, from Louis XI's reign through to the end
of the Wars of Religion. Finally, part three will chart the impact that the
now dominant royal state had on urban forms and communities, the emergence
of a royal fortification service, new ways of envisioning urban communities,
and attempts to spur town economic life, all of which required an expanded
perimeter of fortified places (Vauban's ceinture de fer) while towns in the "interior" began
to be opened up. The second half of the project, Walled Towns and the Shaping
of Early Modern France consists of a series of case studies of urban fortifications
using archival materials. It roughly spans from 1450 to 1650 and considers
how urban fortification projects came to be planned and financed, the organization
of the work site, procurement of materials and labor, the impact on residents,
including people in the faubourgs, and the need to police the militarized perimeter. mww4@psu.edu (10/05)
CHILDBIRTH IN FRENCH MEDICAL TREATISES c. 1500-1700
Valerie Worth-Stylianou, Professor of French
Exeter University ( UK)
Renaissance readers were fascinated by all aspects of childbirth, from conception, pregnancy and birth to sterility and monsters. With the age of printing, France witnessed the publication of a remarkable number of obstetric treatises. In Les Traités d’obstétrique en langue française au seuil de la modernité (Geneva, Droz, 2007) I study the successive editions of some thirty works, from the first French translation of Rosslin's birthing manual in 1536 to the polemical pamphlet by the royal midwife, Louise Bourgeois, in 1627. I analyse treatises by Paré, Joubert and Guillemeau, examining the controversies surrounding the choice to publish in French at a time when Latin was still the accepted language of formal medical discourse, and I discuss debates over subjects of particular social and cultural significance, including male and female seed, the length of pregnancy and hermaphrodites. While the texts betray the frequent rivalries between physicians, surgeons and midwives, they also show the most enlightened authors concerned to reduce the horrific rates of maternal and foetal mortality. The volume reproduces, with notes, the prefaces to these treatises, together with a critical bibliography, an analysis of each author, and reproductions of woodcuts and title pages.
I am now developing a second phase of this project, a website on ‘Birthing Tales’ (accounts of documented, specific births) in French medical texts between 1500-1700: www.people.ex.ac.uk/vw211. I demonstrate the variety and verve with which such tales are presented in works which purport, at least, to be serious medical treatises, and argue that vernacular medical discourse is best understood within a broader print context, alongside other scientific writings, gazettes and popular fiction. v.worth@exeter.ac.uk 08/07
CREATING JUSTICE IN LATE MEDIEVAL FRANCE: THE
SEIGNEURIAL COURT OF SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS
Edna Ruth Yahil, Ph.D (2004)
Postdoc at the Washington State University Swiss Center
Dissertation Director: Kathryn Norberg, University of California Los Angeles
(UCLA)
My dissertation looks at social, legal, and
political changes that occurred in France in the period 1400-1550 through
the lens of the seigneurial
court
of the abbey of Saint Germain des Prés which had jurisdiction over parts
of Paris, the bourg Saint Germain, and adjacent villages. Earlier studies
of
Châtelet and Parlement records have provided valuable insights into crime,
marginality, and policing in Paris during the medieval period, but we know
little
as yet about daily life in fifteenth-century towns and villages. My work, which
treats such topics as dispute resolution, property transfers, family relations,
and guilds, compliments these studies by taking into account civil as well
as
criminal records and examines powerful courts controlled by seigneurial institutions
that have heretofore been overlooked (AN Z2 series). Furthermore, I do not
confine
my research to one traditional period, rather my study begins in the Middle
Ages and continues into the Early Modern period, demonstrating a fluidity of
social and cultural historical experience that transcends modern disciplinary
boundaries. My work illustrates that two significant trends of social change
occurred during this period. First, this was a phase of increased monarchical
pretension and seigneurial resistance as evidenced by attempts of the monarchy
to reduce local rights and the efforts of the local authorities to protect
their
prerogatives. Second, late medieval and renaissance courts, though seemingly
inaccessible to non-elites, in fact became an important means of resolving
conflict
and acquiring social status and power. eyahil@stanfordalumni.org (9/04)