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This dissertation focusses on the Breve storia, a medical biography published in September 1744 by physician and anatomist Giovanni Bianchi. This novella recounts the life and autopsy of a young Roman servant, Giovanni Bordoni, known in many villages in Tuscany as an enthusiastic seducer and womanizer, until his death on June 28th, 1743. At this point, when the body is stripped for the autopsy, the physician notes female reproductive organs. In fact, even though Bordoni led his adult life under a male identity, his biological sex becomes a subject of discussions and writings after his death, immortalizing him as a woman with same-sex desires, cross-dressed as a man. However, by delving into sexuality and gender as they were understood in early modern Europe, this dissertation deconstructs two main claims: first, that female same-sex desires were intrinsically linked to clitoral hypertrophy, second, that gender existed only in a strict normative link to the biological sex. Thus, by analyzing the Breve storia and Bianchi’s correspondence with his readers, it is possible to shed light on the diverse ways of naming and understanding female homoeroticism in the 18th century, linking it for example with genital anatomy, psychology, and emotions. This master’s thesis highlights that, while the early moderns considered that gender’s essence is found in sex, they could understand it as sometimes fluid, but also as not fully masculine or feminine.

Abstract This thesis focuses on the prevention of early childhood accidents in the Middle Ages. Through the study of three compilations of miracula, we will analyze the thematic of the child that they present. These compilations are the Miracles of the Blessed Virgin by Gautier de Coincy, the Miracles of Nostre-Dame de Chartres by Jean le Marchant and the Rosarius. In this study, we will look at the diversity of normative discourses surrounding this theme. These analyze allow us to take stock of the precautions surrounding children in the Middle Ages. We conclude that the Miracles of Nostre-Dame de Chartres are not representative of the general miracula corpus, cause the miracula it contains present a preventive character more focused on the physical dangers faced by the child.

Based on a comparative study of the communities that migrated from India to French Indochina and British Burma, this thesis examines the place of Indian migrants in these two colonies during the first half of the 20th century. Indian minorities had a special place in the colonial system because of their various legal status, political and economic influence, and intermediary roles. These dynamics and the interest in studying them are illustrated by three specific case studies: 1. the dispute between Indian police officers and the municipality of Saigon in 1907; 2. Negotiations during the separation of Burma from the British Raj in 1935; 3. the repercussions of the 1929 stock market crash on government discourse on these communities and their place in colonial settings. The interaction of Indian minorities with colonial administrations indicates their understanding of imperial workings. They illustrate their skillful navigation of government structures and their mobilization to defend their interests. The analysis of their position as intermediaries highlights how minority communities have used their relationships to bypass lines of authority and power and sheds light on the plurality of hierarchical axes in colonial situations. These three case studies provide a more holistic conceptualization of colonial Indian minorities and support their complexity, highlighting their ambiguous allegiances and how they define and redefine themselves. The colonial authorities' speeches on those communities highlighted the link between the desirability of Indian minorities and Indian minorities and the need for their presence in the two colonies. This thesis helps deepen our understanding of what an empire is and the complex place that groups deemed homogenous and marginal may have occupied within it.

Leveraging an original dataset on coastal shipping and invoking a new economic geography framework, we study the effects of domestic and international trade costs on industrial concentration and productivity growth in interwar Brazil. In the great wave of globalization before 1914, international trade costs were low and domestic costs high. Economic activity was dispersed along the coastline. The interwar period saw a reversal: international costs surged and domestic costs declined. Economic activity was increasingly concentrated in São Paulo. Agglomeration economies enabled productivity growth in the 1930s, mostly in durable and capital goods.

En dialogue avec des recherches récentes menées sur les identités multiples des chrétiens de l’Antiquité tardive, cette contribution propose un cas d’étude sur les sermons adressés au peuple de l’évêque gaulois Césaire d’Arles (vers 470-542), plus précisément sur ceux dans lesquels Césaire aborde les pratiques de ses contemporains face à l’abondance d’enfants et l’infertilité, leurs pratiques de guérisons et leurs cultures festives en lien, notamment, avec les fêtes des saints. Miroirs de situations communicationnelles précises, ces sermons permettent de saisir, malgré leur aspect rhétorique, les tensions existant entre le discours épiscopal de Césaire traitant des enjeux de pastorale et de pouvoir épiscopal d’une part, et l’adhésion des chrétiens à des pratiques sociales, jugées incompatibles avec une identité chrétienne d’autre part. Ces sermons montrent en filigrane l’existence d‘une opposition entre deux modèles d’organisation de références identitaires : un modèle pyramidal qui classe toutes les références identitaires par rapport à la seule christianité versus un modèle latéral de ces mêmes références qui suppose qu’en fonction de situations quotidiennes concrètes, la christianité revêtait, pour les croyants, une importance variable. Ce cas d’étude ne permet pas seulement de souligner l’importance d’un regard scientifique équilibré sur les croyances et les pratiques, mais aussi les limites d’une classification de pratiques jugées tantôt religieuses, tantôt sociales.

Historiography of ancient monastic trends has been deeply renewed during the recent years thanks to several conferences which put forward comparative and interdisciplinary approaches, some of them being specifically dedicated to female forms of religious life. Henceforth, scholars dissuade us to read the history of monasticism trough 'Benedictine glasses'. They invite us to take into account every type of sources - written, archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic. The interpretation of the written sources - monastic rules, but also hagiographical and diplomatic sources - has been nowadays deeply renewed. These recent works agree to give to early 'monasticism' a wider definition, taking into account the extreme diversity of the community forms of religious life attested in the West during this period. These works deserve to be continued further through comparative studies focused on precise problematics. This research project aims to explore how some communities tried to reconcile the practice of a monastic life with the service of an important sanctuary, and also how some ancient communities succeeded in holding firm through centuries, often with the support of powerful protectors.

"Gender, Mediation and Popular Education in Venice, 1760-1830 examines how women with enough cultural capital could turn their identity as representatives of "the public" - those on the receiving end of education - to their advantage, producing knowledge under the guise of relaying it. Author Susan Dalton looks at the question of how elite women turned their reputation for ignorance into an opportunity to establish themselves as authors at the dawn of the nineteenth century in Venice. Many literary figures saw women as a group in need of education. By deploying essentialist understandings of femininity, whereby women possessed superior moral virtue but deficient rationality, these women entered the publishing world as cultural mediators, identified by contemporaries as key players in the social projects of public education and moral edification central to the European Enlightenment. Focussing on Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi and Giustina Renier Michiel, both renowned Venetian authors, the author introduces two well-known Italian women of letters to English-speaking scholars; re-evaluates the impact of their writing in Italy and raises questions about female authorship across Europe; broadens our conceptions of gender norms; and enriches our knowledge of a little-known period of women's writing in Italy. This volume is an essential resource for students and scholars alike interested in women's and gender history, early modern history and social and cultural history"--

An article from Cap-aux-Diamants, on Érudit.

Une révolution a lieu en ce moment dans les archives et dans la manière de reconstituer le passé. Plusieurs partenariats, dont Donner le goût de l’archive à l’ère numérique, démontrent qu’il y a moyen de mettre l’Intelligence artificielle au service de la recherche historique. Il s’agit d’abord de préserver les archives paroissiales, judiciaires, notariales, architecturales et archéologiques en les rendant accessibles au plus grand nombre, par la numérisation, la transcription automatique des écritures avec l’outil Transkribus, le traitement massif des documents ainsi transcrits et la recherche plein texte dans des centaines de milliers de pages — tout en partageant et en faisant fructifier les expertises grâce à l’Atelier permanent d’analyse documentaire et à l’arrimage en un guichet unique des bases de données issues de ces archives. À terme, cela permettra d’entrer le nom d’un individu dans un moteur de recherche pour avoir accès à toutes les archives le concernant.

L’Œuvre de la Sainte-Enfance connut un succès gigantesque auprès des enfants catholiques canadiens entre les années 1920 et 1960. À travers cette implication missionnaire, les enfants ont été formés à croire en leur capacité de rédemption de l’enfance éloignée. La Sainte-Enfance transformait les enfants lointains en possession, commodités, jeux et personnification à la disposition de l’imagination géographique et émotive des jeunes Canadiens français et Canadiennes françaises. Elle le faisait en s’appuyant sur des techniques pédagogiques et des pratiques antérieures et transnationales de performances racialisées. Comment peut-on donc faire l’histoire de la participation des enfants canadiens-français à cette œuvre en analysant leur propre voix ? Par l’étude d’un corpus de 803 lettres envoyées par des enfants, nous disséquons comment l’Œuvre de la Sainte-Enfance rythmait le quotidien des jeunes Canadiens français et Canadiennes françaises et quel univers de représentations raciales et genrées elle leur offrait.