Montclair State University

Faculty Member, History

Other Affiliations: Montclair State University, Women's Studies

About

I am an assistant professor of early modern European history and women's studies at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. I received my Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University (2001), and my B.A. from Reed College (1993).

My recent research has focused on reconstructing the impact early modern relations between France and the Ottoman Empire had upon eighteenth-century French culture and identity formation. Today's strained relationship between the civilizations of Islam and the West demonstrates a profound need to better understand the ties which have historically bound these two worlds. Using diplomatic records, travel and literary works, and popular engravings, my work of the past ten years examines how conflicting French images of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire were employed in the creation of individual and national identities within Old Regime France between the 1660s and the 1780s.

I have published a number of articles on turquerie. I have also recently embarked on a new project about Sophie Germain, a Napoleonic-era French mathematician.

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