Friday March 14, 2014 from 12:30-1:30 in the History Lounge, 4th Floor, Paterson Hall.
During Louis XIV’s long reign, France was unusual in the extent to which women served, officially and unofficially, as diplomats. This talk will explore the curious cases of two such women – Anne Marie de Pontac de Guilleragues (b.1632) and Marie Petit (b. 1673) – who attempted, one very successfully and one ultimately unsuccessfully, to wield French diplomatic authority in the Middle East toward the end of Louis XIV’s long reign. In doing so, the talk will situate these women in the context of the role of gender in early modern French diplomacy and in the context of late seventeenth-century French foreign policy.
Matt Lauzon is an Associate Professor in the History Department, University of Hawaii, and Carleton alumni. Professor Lauzon completed degrees in History and Philosophy at Carleton University before earning a PhD with The Johns Hopkins University. Growing up on the border of French and English Canada, Professor Lauzon became interested in the history of attitudes about language. His dissertation on early modern European theories about language formed the foundation of his recent book, Signs of Light: French and British Theories of Linguistic Communication, 1648-1789 (Cornell University Press, 2010). Professor Lauzon is currently working on 18th-century French representations of the past and on French diplomacy in the Middle East in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Co-sponsored by the Joint Chair in Women’s Studies and the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture