Tuesday 10th November 2020, 5:15-6:30pm

Online

Nora Baker (Jesus) - "Distingués par leur piété": The Social Value of Suffering in Huguenot Memoir

The late seventeenth century saw a renewed wave of hostilities against Protestantism in France, culminating in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. State persecution led a large number of French Protestants, or 'Huguenots', to escape their homeland and start new lives elsewhere, though some were captures during their attempts to flee and then subjected to lengthy periods of confinement. Many Huguenots wrote memoirs detailing their experiences during these troubled times. My work looks at accounts penned by those who faced three different kinds of hardships: women imprisoned in convents, men forced to work as galley slaves, and refugees who struggled to negotiate their identities after settling in new lands. We know that these 'life stories' were often read aloud in refugee and social spaces or circulated to the wider Protestant community in Europe thanks to clandestine networks such as that of Pierre Jurieu's Lettres Pastorales. My work investigates the identities the authors sought to establish for themselves when composing their autobiographical accounts. I argue that these memoirs could be used as tools to win the approval of co-religionists, as they showcased their authors' intelligence, charisma, and dedication to their faith, even in traumatic circumstances. I will contend that the form and content of the memoirs discussed in this paper were influenced not only by Biblical exegesis, but also by the continuing legacy of early Huguenot martyrological writing.

Caroline Godard (University of California, Berkeley) - Being Time-Bound: Montaigne on Touch, Contagion, and the Contemporary

In this presentation I will read from a portion of my MSt dissertation, which looks at how various forms of touch and temporal presence illuminate the intersubjective nature of Montaigne's Essais. Working against the assumptions towards individuality that often emerge in readings of Montaigne, I ask how the confluences of contemporaneity, contagion, compassion and community can offer alternative ways of understanding the relations between self and other. Ultimately, the essay questions how Montaigne does (or does not) perceive himself to be part of his contemporary moment, as well as what it means to read Montaigne now in a contemporary way; in so doing, it amends existing definitions of the contemporary as an individual concern.

Finally, I will end this presentation by discussing how and in what ways this work at Oxford is following me into the first year of my PhD program at UC Berkeley.

This session was recorded for those unable to attend (please see below):