“Martial Acts Virtuously Enacted by Women”: Gender and Violence in the French Wars of Religion

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University Club, Room 212
@ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Portrait Image of Brian Sandberg wearing a suit jacket seated in front of book shelves

 

Monday Seminar:

Brian Sandberg

History, Northern Illinois University

Solmsen Fellow (2009-2010)

 

This paper concerns the gendered nature of violence and political culture in early modern French history. Religious identities and animosities sharply divided France along confessional (or sectarian) boundaries between a Catholic majority and Calvinist minority in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Gender boundaries also strongly influenced French society, defining women’s and men’s positions in religious, political, military, and cultural spheres. This study aims to bridge the gap between gender studies and the history of warfare in order to discover the ways in which violence and subjectivity were gendered in the French Wars of Religion.

 

Brian Sandberg, currently a Solmsen Fellow at the IRH, is an Assistant Professor of History at Northern Illinois University who is interested in the intersections of religion, violence, and political culture during the European Wars of Religion. His forthcoming monograph entitled, Warrior Pursuits: Noble Culture and Civil Conflict in Early Modern France examines provincial nobles’ orchestration of civil violence in southern France in the early seventeenth century. He has published a number of articles and book chapters on religious violence, gender relations, and noble culture in early modern France, and is currently working on a new book project on Gender and Violence in the French Wars of Religion, 1562-1629.