My research interests focus on early modern France, with particular focuses on erudition, family memory, and the urban culture of French provincial cities in the sixteenth through the late seventeenth centuries. My first book, Between Crown and Community, investigated the political culture of Poitiers, a mid-sized provincial capital from the reign of François I (1515-1547) to that of Henri IV (1589-1610). My second book, entitled Historical Communities: Cities, Erudition, and National Identity in Early Modern France, focused on local history writing in French provincial towns throughout France in the period of roughly 1550-1660. I am currently working on a book-length project on family memory and genealogical culture in France, which will draw on archival and published works to connect the ways that particular families constructed their own trajectories with the developing genres of genealogical histories and memoirs. My interests thus embrace questions of knowledge formation, the construction and use of archives, cultural interactions between local elites and the well-known scholars of the Republic of Letters, the nature of the early modern family, the development of history writing from the early modern period to the present, the relationship between localities and the state, the intersection of politics and religion, the nature of religious conflict, and more generally the social, cultural, intellectual and political conditions of the early modern period.
In addition to undergraduate teaching, I welcome the opportunity to work with graduate students, as a main dissertation adviser on virtually any topic related to early modern France in the period of roughly 1450-1700 or as a committee member for students wanting to do a field in early modern Europe.
I have recently published a book entitled Historical Communities: Cities, Erudition, and National Identity in Early Modern France (Brill, 2021), on local history writing in France during the period of roughly 1550-1660. The book explores the outpouring of local history writing during this period, with a special focus on how local scholars from a range of French cities, from large provincial capitals to much smaller towns, used available sources to craft a useful urban past. The book therefore examines networks of erudite scholars in Paris and the provinces, the exchange of information, the ways that questions such as a town’s origins could be used to make politically useful statements, the sources of historical conflict, and the ways that contentious issues such as the Wars of Religion and the Fronde were represented in subsequent history writing on the local level. The book also focuses on two figures who served as nodes of historical exchange: François de Belleforest in the 16th century and André Duchesne in the 17th century.
Together with Megan Armstrong of McMaster University and Fabien Montcher of Saint Louis University, I have completed editing a collected volume entitled “Constructing European Historical Narratives in the Early Modern World.” It has been produced via the editorial team of the journal, Renaissance and Reformation, and will appear shortly in the “Reflections on Early Modernity Series” of Iter Press.
I am also interested in the kinds of exchange–intellectual, social, political, affective–that took place in the process of familial memory formation and genealogical history writing in 16th-18th-century France, particularly among elite urban families and between erudite scholars and the noble families who commissioned these kinds works. I am expanding on these associations in a current book project on “Genealogy, Family, and Memory in Early Modern France.” This project leads me to connect a range of institutional and narrative documents available in French archives with forms of literary writing, including lives, memoirs, and genealogical histories.
I am continuing to pursue the question of the construction of local memory in France, especially with regard to the Wars of Religion.
Books:
Historical Communities: Cities, Erudition, and National Identity in Early Modern France (Leiden: Brill, 2021). Publication Link (This book is available to consult or download as a .pdf from the UCSB library catalogue. It is also included in the Brill “My Book” program.) Preview
Between Crown and Community: Politics and Civic Culture in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004). Preview Available from Internet Archive
Articles, chapters, and essays:
- “L’histoire urbaine et l’histoire des lignages en débat. Les listes des maires à Poitiers à l’Époque moderne,” Histoire urbaine 65, no. 1 (January 2023): 65-78. Abstract ; Interview discussing this article
- “Introduction to ‘Colbert, Venality, and Parisian Judicial Elites during the Long Seventeenth Century: A Reappraisal by Robert Descimon’” H-France Salon 14, Issue 22 (published online, January 2023).
- “French Cities in the Sixteenth Century,” Routledge Resources Online: The Renaissance World (published online, December 2022),
DOI: 10.4324/9780367347093-RERW5-1.
- “The Reformed Terreur Panique of 1562: Debating Miracles and Memory in Seventeenth-Century Le Mans,” French History 34, no. 4 (December 2020).
- “In Medias Res: A Review Essay,” H-France Salon 9, issue 13, no. 1 (August 2017).
- “Reading Municipal Lists, Interpreting Civic Practice from the Insights of Robert Descimon to Seventeenth-Century Bourges,” in Social Relations, Politics, and Power in Early Modern France, ed. Barbara B. Diefendorf (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2016), 134-57. Preview of article
- “Le livre des privilèges à l’épreuve du temps: entre histoire municipale et théories politique et sociale de la ville,” in À la croisée des temps. Approches d’histoire politique, juridique et sociale, ed. Pierre Bonin, Fanny Cosandey, Élie Haddad and Anne Rousselet-Pimont (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016), 169-79.
- « Henri Drouot et les historiens anglo-saxons : une influence paradoxale, » Annales de Bourgogne 87-88 (October 2015): 59-72. Pre-publication version
- “Cosmography, Local History, and National Sentiment: François de Belleforest and the History of Paris,” French Historical Studies 35, n. 1 (winter 2012): 31-60.
- « La république urbaine et la République des lettres : André Duchesne, Jean Rogier, et les significations de l’histoire locale à Reims au XVIIe siècle, » Histoire, économie, société 30, n. 2 (June 2011) :29-46.
- « Réseaux savants et choix documentaires de l’histoire locale française: Écrire l’histoire de Bourges dans la seconde moitié du xviie siècle,» Histoire urbaine 28 (August 2010) : 65-84.
- “La Rochepozay, Ghost-Writer: Noble Genealogy, Historical Erudition, and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century France,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 37 (2009): 1-20.
- “The ‘Bourgeoisie Seconde,’ the Catholic League, and Urban Society,” French History 17 (December 2003): 342-51.
- “The Shadow of the Revolution: Continuities in Society and Politics in Early Modern France,” Journal of Urban History 28 (September 2002): 769-777.
- “The Benefit of the Ballot? Elections and Influence in Sixteenth-Century Poitiers,” French Historical Studies 24 (fall 2001): 621-52.
Courses for 2025-26
Hist 4B, Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 800-1700 (Fall)
Hist 204, Writing Workshop (Spring)
Courses Taught
Hist 4B, Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 800-1700
Hist 121A, Renaissance Italy, 1300-1530
Hist 121B, Renaissance Humanism
Hist 121C, France in the Sixteenth Century (cross-listed as French 154CA)
Hist 121D, Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe, 1450-1700
Hist 121F, France in the Seventeenth Century (cross-listed as French 154CB)
Hist 121Q, Undergraduate Reading Seminar in Renaissance Europe
Recent subjects:
“The Religious Cultures of Renaissance Europe”
“Reform and Religious Violence in Sixteenth-Century France”
“Popular and Elite Cultures in Renaissance Europe”
“Renaissance Monarchy: Theory and Practice”
Hist 121R, Undergraduate Research Seminar in Early Modern European History, 1450-1700
Hist 194AH-BH, Undergraduate Honors Research Seminar
Hist 201E, Graduate Reading Seminar in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Recent subjects:
“Memory and its Practices in Europe, c. 1400-1700″
“Urban Space in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe”
“The Individual, Violence, and the State in Early Modern Europe, 1450-1750”
“1500: Change or Continuity?”
“Readings in Sixteenth-Century France”
Hist 202, Historical Methods
Hist 204, Research/Writing Workshop
Hist 215E-F, Medieval/Early Modern Graduate Research Seminar
Hist 223A-B, Modern/Early Modern Graduate Research Seminar
Under normal circumstances, I am happy to work with students wanting to do Honors Contracts, Independent Studies (Hist 199), or Independent Reading Courses (Hist 596)
Talks and Discussions Available On-Line:
“Urban Histories and the French Wars of Religion: Constructing and Debating Civic Memory,” William Beik Memorial Seminar, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., March 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T76H_zE8T4U.
Discussion of Historical Communities in dialogue with Professor Michael Breen, French Presse, Zoom seminar hosted by the Society for French Historical Studies, April 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOIejpqZWuA.
Moderator, “Zoom seminar on the work of Robert Descimon,” May, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgoVEO-kycE.
Recorded interview regarding my article, « L’histoire urbaine et l’histoire des lignages en débat »,” Faculti, https://faculti.net/lhistoire-urbaine-et-lhistoire-des-lignages/.
Other Professional Activities
UC President’s Research Award in the Humanities, 2007-2008
Professeur Invitée, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, April 2012
Guest editor of H-France Salon, Vol. 7, Issue 13: “New Directions: French Scholarship on Early Modern France“
Co-editor of H-France Forum, for history in the period of the Middle Ages-17th century, 2009-22.
Professeur Invitée, Université Paris-Nanterre, November 2022.
Guest editor of H-France Salon, Vol. 14, Issue 22 (January 2023), “Colbert, Venality, and Parisian Judicial Elites during the Long Seventeenth Century: A Reappraisal by Robert Descimon.”
Member of the Editorial Board for French Historical Studies, 2021-2024