Director, University Honors Program

My teaching and research interests focus on French and European history in their modern global context. I am a historian of ideas, and I am particularly interested in the way human nature has been defined in modern times and how those definitions shape our understanding of sex roles, racial differences, citizenship, and social power. I currently teach courses on the history of gender, European imperialism, citizenship, and slavery at both lower and upper-division levels. I also teach survey courses in European history and first-year seminars for the University Honors program. My first book, Socialism’s Muse, is a history of French romantic socialism, feminism, and ideas about women and gender during the early 19th century. More recent research explores the way romantic socialists contributed to the justification of French imperialism in the 1830s and 40s, an important period in the rebuilding of the French empire and the era of slavery abolition, and the origins of humanitarianism in this same era.  My current research focuses on debates over slavery and antislavery in France in the first half of the nineteenth century.

 

Courses

History 30: The French Revolution, An Introduction

History 112: The Haitian Revolution in World History and Memory

History 115: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in the Modern World

History 116: Sex and Gender in the Age of High Imperialism

History 21/121: Human Rights and Humanitarianism

History 39/139: Modern France and the World

Honors 11H/12H: Rebellion and Conformity