Department of History
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive MC 0104
La Jolla, California 92093-0104

Vita

Cynthia Truant has taught at UCSD since 1988. In 1971 she received her B.A. with honors in history from U.C. Berkeley, after transferring from Mills College (Oakland, CA). She received her MA (1972) and PhD (1978) in history from the University of Chicago and attended courses at the Université de Paris I (Sorbonne) and the Ecole Normale Supérieure. She specializes in the history of Europe, particularly France, from about 1650 to 1850, with particular emphasis on the working classes, gender studies, the European Enlightenment, European and French Revolutions (from 1688 to 1848), and the urban history of Paris. She has also taught "Introduction to Social Movements" which focuses on the late 20th century, across cultures, for the Program in Critical Gender Studies.

Publications

Book

• The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France. (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1994).

• "Rites, Compagnonnages, Politique en 1848," in Socio-Anthropologie: Revue interdisciplinaire de sciences sociales, no. 4, 1998: 55-59.
• "Le maîtrise d'une identité: Corporations féminines à Paris au XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles," Clio: Histoire, femmes & sociétés, no. 3, automne-hiver 1996.
• "Parisian Guildwomen and the (Sexual) Politics of Privilege: Defending their Patrimonies in Print," in Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France, eds. D. Goodman & E. Goldsmith (Ithaca & London, 1995).
• "The Guildwomen of Paris: Gender, Power, and Sociability in the Old Regime," Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History (1987), 15 (1988): 130-138.
• "Independent and Insolent: Journeymen and their 'Rites' in the Old Regime Work Place," in Steven L. Kaplan and Cynthia Koepp (eds.), Representations of Work in France (Cornell University press, 1986), pp. 131-175.
• "Insolentes e independientes: los oficiales y sus 'ritos' en el taller del Antiguo Régimen," in El trabajo en la encrucijada: Artesanos urbanos en la Europa de la Edad Moderna, eds. Victoria Lopez y José A. Nieto (Madrid, 1996) [translation of "Independent and Insolent": see above].
• "Solidarity and Symbolism among Journeymen Artisans: The Case of Compagnonnage," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 21 (1979): 214-26.

One of the libraries in Paris in which she does research.

Courses Taught

• HIEU 129. Paris, Past and Present [from the 16th century to the present].
• HIEU 130. European Culture and Society in the 18th Century [1688-1789].
• HIEU 131. The French Revolution: From the Storming of the Bastille to the Fall of Napoleon.
• HIEU 136A. European Society and Social Thought, 1688 to 1870.
• HIEU 147. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the late 17th Century.
• HIEU 148. Women and Gender from the Enlightenment to the Victorian Era (1700 to 1871).
• HIEU 167/HIGR 267. Special Topics in the Social History of Early Modern Europe: Interpreting the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era
• HIEU 180/HIGR 280. Special Topics in European Women's History: Women and Gender in the Era of the French Revolution.
• HIGR 221: Interpretations of European History from the late 17th Century to 1850.

Current Research

• Books on guildswomen and women workers on the "edge" of the law in the socio-economic and cultural contexts in 17th-18th century Paris.
• "Working on the Wrong Side of the Law in Eighteenth-Century Paris: The Politics of Boundary Crossings," article in preparation for the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

Revolutionary symbolism: "French Republic: Liberty, Equality," 1790s