Suzanne Desan
Professor

eMail: smdesan@wisc.edu
Phone: (608)262-8694
Office: 5124 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5031 Mosse Humanities

Curriculum Vitae: View PDF

Office Hours: Tuesdays 3:30 - 5:00, Thursdays 12:30 - 1:15

Education: PhD: University of California - Berkeley; MA: University of California - Berkeley; BA: Princeton University

Bio Sketch:

My general field of study is early modern Europe, with particular emphasis on early modern France and especially the French Revolution.  My past research has focused primarily on popular politics and social activism during the French Revolution: concentrating first on religion, gender, and popular culture; and then, on gender dynamics within families and revolutionary politics.  My current project examines foreign radicals who came to France during the revolutionary era.  I am also exploring how the French revolutionaries imagined the foreign and defined themselves via their project of revolutionary expansion abroad. General interests: social theory, gender theory, social‑cultural history of early modern Europe, culture and politics in the eighteenth‑century transatlantic world.

Selected Publications:

• Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France, co-edited with Jeffrey Merrick, (Pennsylvania State University Press, forthcoming 2009)
• The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France, (University of California Press, 2004)
• Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France, (Cornell University Press, 1990)
  

Courses Taught:

Lecture Courses:

• History 119 - The Making of Modern Europe 1500-1815 - Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
• ILS 208 - Western Culture 1400-1815
• History 320 - Early Modern France 1500-1715
• History 352 - Eighteenth Century Europe - Syllabus 2007 (pdf)
• History 358 - The Old Regime and French Revolution - Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
• History 572 - Studies in European History

Undergraduate Seminars:

• History 223 - Freshmen Seminar: "Society and Gender in Early Modern Europe"
• History 283 - Honors Seminar: "Studies in History: French Culture, 1500-1800"; "European Enlightenment"
• History 600 - Advanced Seminar in History - Topics: "French & English Views of Foreigners, 1700-1815 "; "Transatlantic Encounters in the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1815"; "Eighteenth-Century French Culture"; "The French Revolution" - Syllabus 2008 (pdf); "The European Enlightenment" - Syllabus 2008 (pdf); "Rights & Identity in Revolutionary Europe" - Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
• History 680/690 - Honors Thesis Colloquium

Graduate Courses:

• History 703 - History and Theory - Syllabus 2007 (pdf)
• History 707 - Early Modern European History, 1500-1789 - Topics: "Old Regime and French Revolution" Syllabus 2009 (pdf); "Society and Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe"
• History 952 - Seminar in Comparative History: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Empire in the Transatlantic World, 1750-1850