Department of History | The University of Chicago

The University of Chicago
Social Sciences Collegiate Division
Gates-Blake Hall, Room 435
5845 S. Ellis Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
(773) 702-7996 -- Office
(773) 834-0493 -- Fax
Email: jpalmer@uchicago.edu

Field Specialties
18th Century France ; Women and Gender ; Slavery and Colonialism; the Atlantic World.

Biography

I am interested in how slavery and colonialism affected the lives of eighteenth-century Europeans who never left Europe, especially women, who seemingly had limited venues to engage with colonial projects. My current research focuses on how slavery and colonialism shaped family and patronage in eighteenth-century France. The movement of people of French and African descent between France and its Caribbean colonies created relationships that both defied customary constructions of family and called for new family strategies. By engaging with historical and feminist scholarship on the family, slavery, and colonialism in the Atlantic world, I interrogate notions of family and gender roles and suggest the links between French colonialism and changing ideas about European womanhood.

Publications

"Creating and Belonging to Community: Race and Gender in Eighteenth Century La Rochelle," Proceedings of the Western Society for French History Vol. 34.

"Les Huguenots et leurs esclaves en La Rochelle pendant le XVIIIe siècle: baptême, autorité, et esclavage," in Les Huguenots et l'Atlantique (XVIe-XXIe siècle), ed. Mickaël Augeron, Didier Poton, and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Paris, Presses Universitaires de Paris Sorbonne: 2008).

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Jennifer Palmer

Collegiate Assistant Professor
Ph.D. in History and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, 2008