04/10/08 - Franklin Research Grants will take history professors to France and Spain

Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss and Leah DeVun, assistant professors of history, received Franklin Research Grants from the American Philosophical Society to support travel for their current research projects.

Schloss will use the grant to travel to southern France to continue research for her second book, France at the Edges: Life in France’s Atlantic Port Cities, 1730-1850. This project explores connections among: New Orleans, La.; Saint Pierre, Martinique; Cayenne, French Guiana; Bordeaux, France and St. Louis/Gorée, Senegal during the Age of Revolution.

Schloss received her Ph.D. from Duke University in 2003. She is the author of Creating Boundaries: Race, Class, and the End of Slavery in the French Atlantic which is forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania. Schloss currently teaches courses in Atlantic World history, modern France, and the Caribbean.

DeVun will use the funding to travel to Spain and France this summer to do archival research for an article drawn from her new book in progress, Enter Sex: Science, Hermaphrodites, and the Demands of Difference.

The book explores understandings of sex, gender, and surgery from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. The article, "Cures and Closures: Surgery, Intersex, and the Demands of Difference," looks specifically at how medieval surgeons surgically reconstructed the bodies of intersex people, establishing a longstanding precedent of medical intervention in cases of intersex.

DeVun’s research focuses on the history of science, gender and sexuality in medieval and early modern Europe. She is the author of Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time which is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

DeVun earned her Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia University and came to Texas A&M in 2004.

Since 1933 the American Philosophical Society has awarded small grants to scholars in order to support the cost of research leading to publication in all areas of knowledge. The Franklin program is particularly designed to help meet the costs of travel to libraries and archives for research purposes; the purchase of microfilm, photocopies, or equivalent research materials; the costs associated with fieldwork; or laboratory research expenses.

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Contact: Holly Lambert, 979.862.4879, hollyalyselambert@libarts.tamu.edu