INFR Newsletter 2018-2019

Tallahassee, May 9th, 2019

 

 

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

 

     I write to share with you news of the Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution during the 2018-2019 academic year.

 

 

Graduate Degrees Awarded

 

            In spring 2019, two INFR students, Derek Ferguson and Bradly Philips, received their MA degrees.

 

 

INFR Students on the Job Market

 

  • Bryan Banks (Ph.D. 2014) moved from SUNY – Adirondack to Columbus State University
  • Cindy Ermus (Ph.D. 2014) moved from the University of Lethbridge to UT – San Antonio
  • Derek Ferguson (MA 2019) will be entering the seminary  
  • Arad Gigi (Ph.D. 2018) received a visiting assistant professorship at the University of Southern Mississippi
  • Bradley Philips (MA 2019) will be teaching high-school history in the Miami-Dade School District

 

 

INFR Student Publications

 

     Current and former students also published a number of articles and book reviews.

 

  • Bryan Banks, “Huguenots and the Atlantic World,” Oxford Research (Lei
  • Bryan Banks, “The French Protestant Enlightenment of Rabaut Saint-Etienne” in French History, 32, issue 1 (Mar. 2019), pp.25-44.
  • Cindy Ermus (with Abraham H. Gibson), “The History of Science and the Science of History,” ISIS, 110 (September 2019)
  • Cindy Ermus (ed.), Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk, and Resilience (LSU Press, 2019).
  • Erica Johnson Edwards, “Finding a Time and Place for the Haitian Revolution” in The History Teacher (Feb. 2019), pp.319-331.
  • Erica Johnson Edwards, “The Haitian Revolution: Did this Uprising successfully Advance the Cause of Human Rights,” Issues and Controversies in History
  • Adam Hunt, “Suppressing the Arbitrary: Political Jansenism in the French Revolution and the Abolition of the Lettres de Cachet, 1780-1790,” Journal of the Western Society for French History (2018)
  • Erik Lewis, book review of Lynn Hunt and Jack R. Censer, The French Revolution and Napoleon: Crucible of the Modern World, in Nineteenth-Century French Studies (2019)
  • Joshua Meeks, Napoleon: A Reference Guide to His Life and Works (forthcoming with Rowman-Littlefield)
  • Joshua Meeks, book review of Edward James Kolla, Sovereignty, International Law, and the French Revolution (2019) 
  • Joshua Meeks, book review of Robert Holland, The Warm South: How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination, for the Journal of British Studies (2019).
  • Marina Ortiz, book review of Katie Hornstein, Picturing War in France, 1792-1856
  • Zachary Stolzfus, book review Edward James Kola, Sovereignty, International Law, and the French Revolution for Law and History Review

 

 

INFR Student Conference Participation

 

     This was a very busy year for the INFR on the conference circuit.  Altogether, past and current students presented X papers at a variety of conferences in the U.S. and abroad.

 

  • Bryan Banks, “Genealogies of the So-Called Reformed Religion,” Repenser le refuge: nouvelles perspectives pour l’étude du protestantisme francophone aux Provinces-Unies à l’époque moderne Leiden, NL (2018)
  • Bryan Banks, “The So-Called Republican Reformed Religion: Huguenot Republicanism in the Seventeenth Century Catholic Controverse,” Western Society for French History (2018)
  • Bryan Banks, "Ending the Exclusive Empire of Catholicisms: Jean-Etienne Marie Portalis, Protestantism, and the Concordat of 1801,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (2019)
  • Bryan Banks, speaker “Academic Blogging Roundtable: Networks, Perspectives, Trajectories,” American Historical Association (2019)
  • Cindy Ermus, discussion of her Environmental Disaster book at  the Louisiana Book Festival (2018)
  • Cindy Ermus, “Plants as Case Study in the History of Philosophy, Sciences, and Medicine, 16th-19th Centuries,” History of Science Society (2018)
  • Cindy Ermus, “Disruptions in Time: Historical Reflections on Disaster, Revolution, and the Digital Humanities,” Florida International University (2018)
  • Cindy Ermus,   “The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Society in the Eighteenth-Century World,” Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University (2018)
  • Cindy Ermus, “Networks, Perspectives, and Trajectories,” American Historical Association (2019)
  • Cindy Ermus, “Using Digital Tools to Do Public History,” Society for French Historical Studies (2019)
  • Arad Gigi, “The Chains of Empire: Penal Work Gangs in the French Empire, 1740-1789,” invited talk at the German Historical Institute, Paris (2018)
  • Arad Gigi, “Confronting Corporate Ownership of Bound Labor in Early Modern European Empires,” Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute (2019)
  • Arad Gigi, “Is Race a Useful Category? Climactic Theories of Human Diversity in the Late Colonial and Revolutionary French Empire,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (2019)
  • Ben Goff, “Military Medicine and the Relationship between Knowledge and Empire,” Society for Military History (2019)
  • Caroline Hackett, “Sugar and Suspicion: Investigating Caribbean Loyalties during the American Revolution,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (2019)
  • Joseph Harmon, “Implementing the Concordat of 1801: Municipal Religion in the French Revolution,” FSU Society of Fellows (2019)
  • Joseph Harmon, “Implementing the Concordat of 1801: Municipal Religion in the Nièvre,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (2019)
  • Adam Hunt, “The Decline of Plantation Capitalism in the Revolutionary Atlantic: The Public Debt Crisis of Revolutionary France, the Haitian Revolution, and the Haitian Indemnity, 1791-1825,” Western Society for French History (2018)
  • Adam Hunt, “Nationalized Plantations during the French Revolution: Biens non vendues and the Haitian Indemnity, 1792-1825,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era
  • Erik Lewis, “The Cantalauze Kidnapping: Tactical Migration in the Shadow of War,” Society for Military History (2019)
  • Joshua Meeks, keynote speech Southeast Regional Graduate Conference, “A Discontented Island: In Search of a Corsican National Identity” (2019)
  • Richard Siegler, “The French Revolution and the Leasing of Public Power to the Private Sector,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (2019)
  • Richard Siegler, “Revolutionary Entrepreneurs: Moral Responsibility, Financial Solvency, and Expertise during the French Revolution,” Society for French History Studies (2019)
  • Zachary Stolzfus, “Codifying Credit: The 1804 Civil Code and the Organization of the Hypothèque,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (2019)

 

 

Graduate Student Awards and Fellowships
 

     The graduate students also garnered a number of awards and fellowships.

 

  • Daniel Arena, Wright-Richardson Award for Best Graduate Paper
  • Cindy Ermus, Visiting Scholar at the Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University
  • Cindy Ermus, named Faculty Affiliate for the Centre for Community Disaster Research at Mount Royal University
  • Arad Gigi, Postdoctoral research fellow, INFR (2018-2019)
  • Arad Gigi, Clements Library Fellowship for Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion in American History (2019)
  • Ben Goff, Newberry Library French paleography fellowship
  • Ben Goff, Massena Society Research grant
  • Erik Lewis, Massena Society Research grant
  • Richard Siegler, J. Leitch Wright Jr. Award for Excellence in Teaching

 

 

Life Milestones

 

  • Erica Johnson Edwards got married
  • Zach Stolzfus also got married
  • And so did Caroline Hackett
  • And so did Marina Ortiz
  • Arad Gigi became a father again
  • Joseph Harmon became a father for the first time
  • And so did Joshua Meeks

 

 

New Admissions

 

     Three new students will be joining us in the coming year.  They are:

 

  • Philip Hazard for a Ph.D. (MA, University of Central Missouri)
  • Justine Carré Miller for a Ph.D. (MA, Villanova)
  • William Oaks for an MA (BA, University of Tennessee)

 

All these students received multi-year funding packages (5 years for Ph.D.s, 2 years for MAs) thanks to your generosity, through the Ben Weider Endowment, through competitive university-wide fellowships, and through the history department.  Without your support, it would not be possible to maintain a program of this quality and scale.

 

 

Visiting Scholars

 

     During the past academic year, the INFR hosted a visiting scholar, Dr. Kirsty Carpenter, Associate Professor, Massey University, New Zealand.   Dr. Carpenter spent the spring term researching her forthcoming book on Exiles of the French Revolution in the Age of Democracy in the rich selection of pamphlets and books in the Ben Weider collection held in the Strozier library.  Building on earlier work, she focused on law and the implementations of laws affecting taxes, passports and property of the émigrés by the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies prior to the main body of émigré legislation that appeared in March/April 1793.  Kirsty particularly appreciated the friendly atmosphere of the Strozier special collections library, the generosity of the librarians, and lively conversations with graduates from the Institute working there.  A highlight of her trip was the interaction with History students and their doctoral projects as well as joining the teaching of Professor Cathy McClive’s Ancien Regime paper.  While at FSU, Kirsty attended and presented at the Consortium of the Revolutionary Era in Atlanta, and at the Conference for the Society of French Historical Studies in Indianapolis.  She is Co-President of the Society for French Historical Studies and the organiser of the next conference due to be held jointly with the George Rudé Seminar in Auckland, 7-10 July 2020. 

 

 

Activities of the Institute Professors

 

Dr. Cathy McClive, the Ben Weider Chair of French Revolutionary History had a very productive year.  In addition to present papers at eight conferences and invited talks (the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, the Western Society for French History, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Corporeal Archives held in Belgrade in Serbia, the annual Early Modern Studies Conference at Durham University in the UK, University Paris VII Diderot in Paris, the annual meeting of the UK Society for the Study of French History, and the annual meeting of the International Society of Eighteenth-Century studies in Scotland), Dr. McClive submitted three peer-reviewed chapters for publications which will appear over the course of the next year.  Dr. McClive also began working with her first MA student (Lauren Owens) this year and will be welcoming her first Ph.D. student (Justine Carré Miller) in fall 2019.

 

 

Dr. Rafe Blaufarb, the Ben Weider Eminent Scholar of Napoleonic History, published two peer-reviewed journal articles, gave a number of conference presentations and invited talks (including at the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, the University of Dusseldorf-Essen, the University of Maastricht, the German Historical Institute in Berlin, the Virginia Museum of Art, the University of Indiana, Louisiana State University, and the University of Massachusetts), and was on the BBC World Service program “The Forum” speaking about Napoleon.  Two of his students, Derek Ferguson and Bradley Philips, also received their MA degrees.

 

     2018-2019 was a productive year for the Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution.  Thank you for your support.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Rafe Blaufarb, Ben Weider Eminent Scholar

Director, Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution