This course seeks to introduce students to central themes in the history of France from the reign of Louis XIV to the outbreak of the French Revolution. We will consider the period’s principal political, social, intellectual, cultural, and economic aspects: social hierarchy and inequality; the transformation of the state; gender; the advent of consumer culture; colonialism and slavery; the Enlightenment; and the origins and outbreak of the French Revolution. Course readings will be a combination of primary sources and secondary scholarship reflecting a diversity of methodological approaches to the study of the past. The course is a seminar, and students will be expected to participate actively in classroom discussion.
