Assistant Professor of History
| Phone | 725-3648 |
| Title | Assistant Professor |
| Department | History |
| Work Location | 310A Dudley Coe Building |
| mroberts@bowdoin.edu |
Ph.D., History, Northwestern University (2011)
M.A., History, Northwestern University (2006)
B.A., History, College of William and Mary (2004)
Early modern Europe; the Atlantic world; France; intellectual and cultural history; history of women and gender; family history
I have research interests in the intellectual, cultural, and political history of early modern Europe, especially in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France. My current project, presently titled Living Proof: Intellectual Families and Knowledge Making in Enlightenment France, examines the birth of a new intellectual ideal: the happily married male savant who collaborated fruitfully with his wife and children. It then considers how this domestic turn affected the practice, making, and representation of knowledge. I argue that, in the eighteenth century, the family became an experimental space, a laboratory in which thinkers could apply, adapt, and advertise their ideas on subjects such as inoculation and education.
"Philosophes Mariés and Epouses Philosophiques: Men of Letters and Marriage in Eighteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies 35, no. 3 (Summer 2012), forthcoming.
Manuscript in progress: "Living Proof: Intellectual Families and Knowledge Making in Enlightenment France"
Harold Perkin Dissertation Prize, History Department, Northwestern University (co-winner, 2011)
Millstone Fellowship, Western Society for French History, 2010
Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 2006-2010