Cultural and Intellectual History of Modern Europe
History of the Body
History of Consumption and Consumer Culture
History of Beauty and Fashion
Current Projects
I am currently working on my second book-length project provisionally entitled, Playing Cleopatra: Inventing the Female Celebrity in Third Republic France. This project examines how, through their portrayals of Cleopatra on the Paris stage, Sarah Bernhardt, Colette, and Josephine Baker, illustrated intersections among gender, race, and national identity. Renowned for her exotic beauty, feared and adored for her unfettered exercise of political and personal power, mythologized for her sexual prowess, Cleopatra has long captured the Western cultural imaginary. Yet her image and her legacy have taken on different cultural resonances at specific historical moments. I am interested in exploring her particular resonance during the Third Republic (1871-1940) and in ascertaining how and why that resonance changed depending upon which performer played her on stage. Tracing these differences, I hypothesize, will illuminate broader cultural and political debates regarding woman’s status in the republic, her duty to herself and to her family, class, and nation, and her capacity to symbolically articulate anxieties related to race and sexuality.
Courses Taught
BUI 102 Blount Foundation: Possibilities
HY 102 Western Civilization since 1648
HY 106 Honors Western Civilization since 1648
HY 305 Outraged Europe: Scandals and Controversies at the Fin-de-Siècle
HY 349 Modern France since 1760
HY 365 European Consumer Society
HY 430: Fifteen Minutes: Fame, Celebrity, and Stardom in the 20th Century
HY 430 Undergraduate Research Seminar: Social and Cultural History of the Long 19th Century
HY 430 Undergraduate Research Seminar: Fashion and Beauty in Modern Europe
HY 448 European Women’s History
HY 603 (Graduate) Literature of European History Seminar
HY 635 (Graduate) Seminar in European Gender History
HY 665 (Graduate) Writing Seminar
Selected Publications
Books
Manuscript in progress: Playing Cleopatra: Inventing the Female Celebrity in Third Republic France.
“‘Le miracle et le mirage’: Beauty Institutes and the Making of Modern French Women,” Journal of Business History, Special Issue Paper in Gender, Feminism, and Business History: from Periphery to Centre (September 2020). DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2020.1820989
“Authorizing Fictions: Narrating a Self in Mistinguett’s Celebrity Memoir,” French Historical Studies, Issue 42, Number 2 (April 2019): 295-322.
“Between Venus and Mercury: The 1920s Beauty Contest in France and America,” French Politics, Culture, and Society Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring 2013): 47-68.
Essays and Reviews
Book Chapter in progress, “Making the Body Beautiful,” in Paul Deslandes ed. ACultural History of Beauty,Volume Five: The Age of Empire, 1800-1900. Bloomsbury Press. (forthcoming)
“European Celebrity in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Contemporary European History. Vol. 28 – Special Issue 2 (May 2019): 273-282.
Book Review Essay: “Reading Modern Women,” The Journal of Women’s History 29 (Spring 2017): 197-206.
Book Review Essay: “Exceptional Women: Rights, Liberty, and Deviance in the French Revolution,” Feminist Collections 30 (Summer 2009): 6-9.
