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 French history.
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 recently my research interests focus on 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.
History 30/130A: The French Revolution, An Introduction
History 43/143: The Haitian Revolution in World History and Memory
History 115S: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in the Modern World
History 116S: Sex and Gender in the Age of High Imperialism
History 21/121: Human Rights and Humanitarianism
History 39/139: Modern France and the World
History 100: Historical Interpretation
