Whitehead, Barbara J., Ph.D.

portrait

Contact


(765) 658-4594

Harrison Hall, Room 235
Greencastle, IN
46135

History 

A.W. Crandall Professor of History

Research Interests I am a French historian with a focus on intellectual movements in eighteenth-century France. My primary research focus has been on recovering the voices that have long been relegated to the second tier of Enlightenment writers and thinkers. These figures include such names as the historian Louis-Pierre Anquetil, the scientist and essayist Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet, the Italian adventurer Giacomo de Casanova, and most recently, the feminist writer and political playwright, Olympe de Gouges.

While my research interests shape how I approach my classes, my teaching interests extend more broadly throughout European history from medieval to early modern times.

 

Courses Regularly Taught:

Hist 111: European Civilization I—1300-1800

Hist 197: The History of Happiness

Hist 221: France from Charlemagne to Napoleon

Hist 222: The Crusades

Hist 223: The Vikings

Hist 225: European Women’s History

Hist 336: The Witchcraze in Early Modern Europe

Hist 337: The Age of Louis XIV

Hist 338: The Enlightenment

 

Select Publications

Women’s Education in Early Modern European: A History, 1500-1800. New York: Garland Press, 1999. Edited anthology.

“The Singularity of Madame de Châtelet: An Analysis of the Discours sur le Bonheur.” In Émilie du Châtelet, Philosophe. Julie Hayes and Judith Zinsser, editors. Oxford: SVEC at Oxford University Press, 2006.

“Revising the Revisionists: Louis-Pierre Anquetil and the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.” In Politics, Ideology and the Law in Early Modern Europe. Adrianna Bakos, editor. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1994.