Syllabus for NEH Summer Seminar, “Revolution and Changing Identities, 1789-1799”

Director: Jeremy D. Popkin, Dept. of History, University of Kentucky

Mon., July 2

Introduction to the seminar and the Newberry Library

Tues., July 3

Revolution and Identities: A Conceptual Framework

Issues: How can concepts of personal and collective identity be applied to the understanding of the French Revolution? What contributions to the understanding of identity concepts might emerge from studying a revolutionary crisis?

Readings: Jeremy Popkin, “Revolution and Changing Identities” (unpublished essay); Mona Ozouf, “Regeneration” from Furet and Ozouf, eds., Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution; excerpts from Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew, 72-7 and from Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 52-65; Popkin, excerpt from Press, Revolution and Social Identities in France, 1830-1835, 16-20

Thurs., July 5

Social Identities in the Old Regime (with Sarah Maza, Northwestern University)

Issues: What was the repertoire of public personal identities in the Old Regime? Were notions of identity under challenge before 1789, and what pressures were causing these changes?

Readings: Sarah Maza, “Luxury, Morality, and Social Change,” Journal of Modern History , 1997; Colin Jones, “The Great Chain of Buying: Medical Advertisement, the Bourgeois Public Sphere, and the Origins of the French Revolution”, American Historical Review, 1996; Jay Smith, “Social Categories, the Language of Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution: The Debate over noblesse commercante,” Journal of Modern History 2000

Mon., July 9

Defining Revolution

Issues: What was the nature of the revolutionary process that began in 1789, and why did it have such a radical impact on the people involved in it? In what ways did the Revolution compel individuals to rethink the nature of their identities?

Readings: Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution (all); Keith Baker, “Revolution,” from Baker, Inventing the French Revolution

Wed., July 11

The Identity of the Citizen

Issues: What new identities did the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen create, both explicitly and implicitly? What old-regime identities did it delegitimize? Who was included in the concept of “citizen”?

Readings: Declaration of Rights; Pierre Rétat, “The Evolution of the Citizen from the Ancien Régime to the Revolution,” and Michael Fitzsimmons, “The National Assembly and the Invention of Citizenship,” from Renée Waldinger et al., eds., The French Revolution and the Meaning of Citizenship; William Sewell, “Le Citoyen/La Citoyenne: Activity, Passivity and the Revolutionary Concept of Citizenship,” in Colin Lucas, ed.,The Political Culture of the French Revolution (1988); Marcel Gauchet, excerpt from La Révolution des droits de l’homme. (1989)

Thurs., July 12

Making Legislators and Officials

Issues: How did people have to reconceive themselves to function as revolutionary legislators, officials, and priests?

Readings: Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary, chs. 4-5; selection from Crubaugh, Balancing the Scales of Justice, 130-56; Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture, chs. 3-4.

Mon., July 16

Redefining Identities: the Cultural Dimension

Issues: In what ways did the culture of the revolutionary years contribute to the redefinition of identities? How did the Revolution transform the identities of artists, musicians, and others involved in cultural activities?

Readings: Laura Mason, Singing the Revolution, pp. 42-60; Udolpho van de Sandt, “La peinture: situation et enjeux,” from La Carmagnole des muses, 333-57; Joan Landes, selection from Visualizing the Nation (2001); Nicholas Mirzoeff, “Revolution, Representation, Equality,” from Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1997; Lüsebrink and Reichardt, “Patriot Palloy,” from The Bastille, 118-31.

Wed., July 18

New Identities in the Private Sphere

Issues: How did the Revolution affect the separation between public and private life? Were there changes in the ways individuals defined themselves within the family and in other aspects of their private life?

Readings: Hunt, “Freedom of Dress;” Phillips, Divorce, selections; Desan, “Reconstituting the Social,” Past and Present (1999); Bange, “Les prénoms de l’An II” Annales historiques de la Révolution française (2000)

Thurs., July 19

Counter-Revolutionary Identity

Issues: How did individuals and groups come to be identified as opponents of the Revolution? To what extent did those who were labeled this way accept these identities? What were the consequences of the elaboration of counter-revolutionary identities, for those to whom they were applied and for those who imposed them on others?

Readings: Jean-Clément Martin, selection from La Vendée et la France; Antoine de Baecque, Les Eclats du rire, 203-34; Patrice Higonnet, “’Aristocrate, Aristocratie,’” in Sandy Petrey, ed., The French Revolution 1789-1989 (1989), 47-66; selected images from de Baecque, Caricature révolutionnaire (not in reading packet)

Mon., July 23

Political Leadership, Biography, and Identity (with David P. Jordan, University of Illinois-Chicago)

Issues: What can we learn about the development of revolutionary identities from the study of specific individuals? What special issues involving the study of identities confront the biographer?

Leo Gershoy, Reluctant Terrorist, ch. 9; Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue, chs. 8 and 10; David P. Jordan, Robespierre, pp. 2-22 and 150-64

Wed., July 25

Revolution and New Identities in the French Colonies: History and Literature

Issues: How did the Revolution affect the identities of colonists and dominated groups in the Caribbean? What were the results of these new possibilities? In what ways can fiction help us to understand the experience of the revolutionary era?

Readings: David Geggus, “Racial Equality, Slavery, and Colonial Secession during the Constituent Assembly,”; David Garrigus, “Sons of the Same Father;” Anne Perotin-Dumon, “The Emergence of Politics;” Madison Smartt Bell, All Souls’ Rising

Thurs., July 26

Changing Definitions of Gender

Issues: How did the Revolution affect the definition of gender identities? How were definitions of appropriate female and male identity affected by the Revolution?

Readings: Joan Scott, “A Woman Who has Only Paradoxes to Offer,” and Darline Levy and Harriet Applewhite, “Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutiony Paris”, in Melzer and Rabine, eds., Rebel Daughters; Godineau, [article]; Lynn Hunt, “The Bad Mother” from The Family Romance of the French Revolution; Michael Sibalis, “Regulation of Male Homosexuality in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France”

Mon., July 30

Autobiography and Identity in the French Revolution

Issues: How did individuals caught up in the Revolution use the technology of autobiography to construct representations of their own identities?

Readings: Gusdorf, “Conditions and Limits of Autobiography;” Popkin, “Grégoire as Autobiographer;” Dorinda Outram, The Body and the French Revolution, 124-52; Coleman, “Introduction,” from Coleman et al., eds. Representations of the Self from the Renaissance to Romanticism (2000)

Wed., Aug. 1

Participants’ presentations

Thurs., Aug. 2

Participants’ presentations and concluding discussion