Co-Sponsored by the Center for European Studies, the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy, and the Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies (CIFS).
Discourses of liberty, rights, and political legitimacy shot through both the 1776 Declaration of Independence, which launched the American Revolution, and the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen, which propelled revolution in France thirteen years later. While French and American citizens articulated their rights in mutually legible ways and transatlantic friendships ensured sustained discussion between the two countries, the declarations’ shared values obscure the dramatically different social contexts that informed their conclusions. This talk examines this paradox at the heart of rights conceived of as both natural and societal. It focuses in particular on how French attempts to pronounce universal rights in the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen both resonated with transatlantic dialogue and responded to particular societal challenges that the French faced.
Katie Jarvis is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. She is a historian of early and late modern France. Her research focuses on popular politics, broadly conceived, during the French Revolution. She is especially interested in the intersection of social and cultural history, as well as gender history. She teaches courses on French and European history from the sixteenth century to the present. Katie Jarvis received her Ph.D. from UW-Madison in 2014.
