Selected Publications and Research Conference Presentations
Laura Talamante has published and spoken on a range of topics including women’s rights and patriotism in Revolutionary Marseille, constructions of gender and class, and political and social transformation during the French Revolution. For a full list of publications and conference presentations, view Dr. Talamante’s Academic C.V.
Life in Revolutionary France
Life in Revolutionary France
Edited by: Mette Harder and Jennifer Ngaire Heuer
To be published by Bloomsbury Press, 17 Sep 2020.
The French Revolution brought momentous political, social, and cultural change. Life in Revolutionary France asks how these changes affected everyday lives, in urban and rural areas, and on an international scale.
An international cast of distinguished academics and emerging scholars present new research on how people experienced and survived the revolutionary decade, with a particular focus on individual and collective agency as discovered through the archival record, material culture, and the history of emotions. It combines innovative work with student-friendly essays to offer fresh perspectives on topics such as:
* Political identities and activism
* Gender, race, and sexuality
* Transatlantic responses to war and revolution
* Local and workplace surveillance and transparency
* Prison communities and culture
* Environmental justice
* Food, health, and radical medicine
* Revolutionary childhoods
With an easy-to-navigate, three-part structure, illustrations and primary source excerpts, Life in Revolutionary France is the essential text for approaching the experiences of those who lived through one of the most turbulent times in world history.
Political divisions, gender and politics: the case of revolutionary Marseille
French History, Volume 31, Issue 1, 1 March 2017, Pages 63-84, https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/crx001
Published: 21 February 2017
Through the lens of regional politics, including divisions between Jacobins and Federalists in Marseille, this article highlights the malleability of gender constructs. Women and men used the ability to manipulate gender constructs in a revolutionary context to their advantage in navigating the changing political terrain. The article shifts the focus from the debates and actions of Parisian Jacobins, and questions the success of their attempts during the Terror to make the gendered revolutionary rhetoric of political men and domestic women dominant.
Revolutionary records from Marseille reveal that political divisions rather than gender constructs often served as the most important filter for assessing women’s political participation. Through the lens of regional politics, including divisions between Jacobins and Federalists in Marseille, this article highlights the malleability of gender constructs. Women and men used the ability to manipulate gender constructs in a revolutionary context to their advantage in navigating the changing political terrain. The article shifts the focus from the debates and actions of Parisian Jacobins. It questions the success of their attempts during the Terror to make the gendered revolutionary rhetoric of political men and domestic women dominant. Marseille Federalists and Jacobins identified women’s political power as potentially transgressive and placed it within gendered frameworks of power and political expectations. These frameworks, however, allowed for flexibility in women’s participation depending on the political side and context within which women acted.
Women's Leadership Workshop
Laura Talamante shares her leadership development experience as an alumna of the Higher Education Resource Services Institute. Each HERS Institute participant undertakes a leadership project that captures the unique needs of her campus along with the participants’ leadership strengths. The goal of Laura Talamante’s Capstone project is to institutionalize women’s leadership development at CSUDH, to create a campus culture that understands the institutional and cultural barriers women face in higher education, and strengthen campus gender equity.
Sex, Scandal and Power Relations
Sex, Scandal and Power Relations: From Marseille to Venice, Conjugal Disturbances, Elites and Society in the Eighteenth Century.
A collaborative project by Laura Talamante along with researchers at Aix Marseille Université: Lucien Faggion, a specialist in eighteenth-century Italian and Mediterranean economic, social, and political history, and Christophe Regina, a specialist in eighteenth-century French judicial, urban social, and women’s history.
Together they use the cause célèbre of the separation and divorce case of Marseille’s Dame Rose-Michel Reynoir and Dominique-Barthélémy Cornet, a consul of the republic of Venice, which lasted from 1769-1793. The Dame Reynoir inherited a sizable family fortune, including her maternal aunt and paternal uncle’s assets. She entered an arranged marriage with Dominique-Barthélémy Cornet, both a consul and a merchant trader. Cornet brought important commercial connections between Venice and Marseille. Despite a childless marriage, her family’s support of her separation suit for control of her dowry and inheritance suggest that family inheritance strategies influenced by distinctive features of Roman law in the Midi came into play.
Dr. Talamante’s research looks at the richness of the extensive archival resources that allow for micro and macro historical approaches to illuminate social, economic, familial, cultural, judicial, and political practices in both eighteenth-century French and Italian contexts. Research allows for reflection upon the daily lives of elites, their forms of sociability, and their desire to preserve their commercial, social, and political interests.