Natalie Zemon Davis

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Natalie Zemon Davis (born November 8, 1928 in Detroit ) is a Canadian - American historian and cultural scientist of Jewish origin. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of the early modern period , especially France . Her best-known work is the micro- historical study The True Story of the Return of Martin Guerre .

Natalie Zemon Davis (center) 2010

Life

Natalie Zemon Davis was born in Detroit in 1928 as the daughter of the textile giant Julian Zemon . She attended a private girls' school in a suburb and later the Kingswood School (now: Cranbrook Kingswood School ) in Bloomfield Hills , which is part of the Cranbrook Educational Community . She closed her 1949 Smith College in Northampton with a thesis on the Renaissance - philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi from. It was at this college that she came into contact with the political left and became a political activist for the American Youth for Democracy , a group supported by the Communist Party . After studying at Harvard and Michigan, she received her PhD in 1959 from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor . The subject of her dissertation was Protestantism within the working class of the Lyons printing industry . She taught at Columbia University in New York in 1956, then from 1956 to 1963 at Brown University in Providence , 1963 to 1964 at York University in Toronto , 1971 to 1977 at the University of California in Berkeley , and in 1977 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Social in Paris and from 1978 until her retirement in 1996 at Princeton University in New Jersey . She was also visiting professor at Berkley in 1968, at Yale 1987, at Balliol College at Oxford University from 1994 to 1995 and finally at the University of Toronto from 1996 to 1997. Since her retirement in 1996, she has lived as a writer in Toronto and teaches at the university there. On April 26, 2019, a conference was held at the University of Princeton in honor of her '90th birthday, at which, in addition to Natalie Zemon Davis, colleagues such as Francesca Trivellato and Joan W. Scott spoke.

She is the editor of numerous journals and was president of the American Historical Association in 1987 .

Natalie Zemon Davis is one of the most important representatives of the New Cultural History . Her studies on humanism and Reformation , gender studies and Judaism play a pioneering role in interdisciplinary cultural studies.

Private

In 1948 she met Chandler Davis at Harvard Summer School and married him six weeks later. Today they have three children together: Aaron Davis, Hannah Davis and Simone Davis.

Research interests

Breakthrough in pop culture with The Return of Martin Guerre

Main article: The True Story of the Return of Martin Guerre

Natalie Zemon Davis became known to the general public through her bestseller The Return of Martin Guerre, which has been translated into 21 languages (German: The true story of the return of Martin Guerre ). The book tells the story of the farmer Martin Guerre , who disappeared from Artigat (France) in 1548 without a trace . A few years later someone appeared who pretended to be Martin Guerre and who managed to convince a large part of the family and the village community that he was Martin Guerre. After doubts about his identity and financial frictions, two lawsuits were initiated. He was executed as a cheater after the real Martin Guerre reappeared at the end of the second trial, and the trial of his identity clearly ruled against him.

Her book was preceded by a collaboration with director Daniel Vigne on the film The Return of Martin Guerre , which appeared in 1982, a year before her book was published. In the film, Gerard Depardieu plays the role of the fake Martin Guerre . Davis was instrumental in the script for the film.

The gender history of the early modern period

Davis was one of the first to study gender history in the early modern period. During this period of the 16th and 17th centuries the construction of “femininity” and “masculinity” was expanded. Davis' stated goal is to explore the range of gender roles as well as sexual symbolism within various societies as well as in different epochs in order to better understand how they work and support social systems or trigger their changes. It is important to explain why gender roles can and could be precisely defined or flowing, depending on the society, why they are or were sometimes asymmetrical and sometimes “fair”. Davis deals with questions of how women have lived and how they fare in an order that is changing culturally, politically and socially. In doing so, she attaches importance to the fact that research is not only carried out on women as the oppressed gender, but that the mechanism of oppression is brought to the fore. Davis is of the opinion that there has been no improvement in the position of women from the Middle Ages to the modern age.

Gender studies

At her lecture at the Berkshire Conference in 1975, which was to become a manifesto of the women's movement, she said the following:

`` But it seems to me that we should be interested in the history of women as well as men, that we shouldn't work exclusively on the oppressed gender ... It should become second nature to historians, whatever his or her specialty to consider the consequences of gender just as readily as, for example, class. ''

She also emphasized her preoccupation with gender studies through her micro-historical study '' Drei Frauenleben '' , in which she analyzed the lives of three European women in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Interreligious and intercultural cultural studies

In 2006, Davis wrote another micro-historical study, broadening her area of ​​expertise in Islamic studies: Leo Africanus. A traveler between the Orient and the Occident . In it she deals with the diplomat and author Leo Africanus , who was born a Muslim and later by Pope Leo X . was baptized. Leo Africanus published several works during his lifetime, including a geographical and cultural description of North Africa, which became extremely influential in the later centuries. In her study, Davis examines the relationship between Christian and Islamic communication in the 16th century and works out the mutual ideas of the religions. She also analyzes Leo Africanus' environment in terms of ideas about gender, sexuality and slavery.

Prizes and awards

Works

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schindler, Norbert: Natalie Zemon Davis . In: Lutz Raphael (Hrsg.): Classics of the science of history . 2, From Fernand Braudel to Natalie Z. Davis. CH Beck., Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-54104-9 , pp. 235 .
  2. ↑ Schindler, Norbert: Natalie Zemon Davis . Ed .: Lutz Raphael. 2 From Fernand Braudel to Natalie Z. Davis. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-54104-9 , pp. 238 .
  3. ^ Workshop Celebrating Natalie Zemon Davis. Retrieved on August 29, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Andreas Eckert: Honor for Natalie Zemon Davis: That's so interesting! ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed August 29, 2019]).
  5. ↑ Caroline Arni: "I love to tell stories": Natalie Zemon Davis and the gender history of the early modern period . In: Emancipation: feminist magazine for critical women . tape 21 (1995) , no. 1 , p. 10-12 .
  6. ↑ Schindler, Norbert: Natalie Zemon Davis . Ed .: Lutz Raphael. tape 2 . CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-54104-9 , pp. 246 .
  7. ↑ Davis, Natalie Zemon: Gender and Gender. Proposals for a new women's history, . In: Women and Society at the Beginning of Modern Times. Studies on family, religion and the changeability of the social body . Berlin 1986, p. 126 .
  8. ^ University of Basel: Honorary doctorates in the Faculty of Philosophy and History
  9. ^ Website of the Holberg International Memorial Prize 2010: Natalie Zemon Davis
  10. ^ Member History: Natalie Zemon Davis. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 7, 2018 (with a short biography).
  11. ↑ Class of 2016 / List of New Fellows ( Memento of the original from September 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; accessed on September 12, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / rsc-src.ca
personal data
SURNAME Davis, Natalie Zemon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian-American historian and cultural scientist
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit