Monday Seminar:
Carolyn J. Eichner
UW System Fellow (2020-2021)
History; Women’s & Gender Studies, UW-Milwaukee
Why do states care what people are named? Why do people consider it their right to control their own names and those of their children? The Name: Legitimacy, Identity, and Gendered Citizenship explores how names become sites of contestation between people and states, colonies and metropole, autonomy and hegemony, custom and law, and tradition and modernity. Focusing primarily on 19th-century France and empire, my project analyzes the evolution and significance of the name, as a both intimate and public aspect of private life.
Carolyn J. Eichner is Associate Professor of History and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She was a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during 2015-2016. Eichner is the author of Surmounting the Barricades: Women in the Paris Commune (Indiana University Press). The French translation, Franchir les barricades: les femmes dans la Commune de Paris (Editions de la Sorbonne) is a finalist for the Prix Augustin Thierry, awarded by the city of Paris. Eichner has two forthcoming books: The Paris Commune: A Brief History (Rutgers University Press, 2021) and Feminism’s Empire (Cornell University Press, 2022). Her current project, The Name: Legitimacy, Identity, and Gendered Citizenship, examines the import and consequence that controlling names holds for both those who bear and bequeath them and for governing institutions. She has published in journals including Feminist Studies; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society; French Historical Studies; and Journal of Women’s History.
[Due to COVID-19, this event has been moved to a digital conferencing platform. To participate please send an email with your name, university affiliation, and how you heard about the event to IRH at info@irh.wisc.edu.]