"I Am Like A Mad Woman Lost In The World": Passionate Mobility in the French Empire with Jennifer Boittin

soldier and woman
5:30pm - April/25/2019

Jennifer Boittin is  Associate Professor of French, Francophone Studies and History at Penn State University.

When it comes to empires, sex is often studied as an expression of power relations and race-, gender- and/or class-based hierarchies. What shifts when we think sex in relation to everyday affective and material ties? Tracing voices both archival and fictional, this talk will explore how "French" "women" (both categories are interrogated) crafted passionate words into sentimental daggers, aimed at bureaucrats who otherwise threatened to limit non-state actors' colonial mobility.

Place:  844 Williams Hall