European History Commons^™

Failed Men: The Postwar Crisis Of Masculinity In France 1918-1930, Brandon Moblo

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Masculinity has been viewed by scholars as a concept which was concerned with becoming as opposed to being. One could not achieve the state of being a man and become complacent. One needed to continuously prove one’s masculinity to oneself, other men, and women.

With its emphasis on the core values of masculinity such as strength, duty and above all, courage, the First World War was seen in France as the ultimate test of manhood. However, confronted with the horrors of modern industrial warfare, men were put into a situation where they were bound to fail that test. This led …

A Challenge To Sexual And Marital Propriety And Communal Reaction, Kenneth Stow

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The selection of sources from the early 1550's Rome deal with the question of honor of young women and their fathers.

The Jewish Community of Rome was unimpressed. It wanted it made clear that one did not make accusations that could harm the well-being, in fact, mostly financial, but also the honor, of young women. Indeed, the bride Ricca was herself awarded what amounted to a hefty fine; we know that among Christians, it was the father’s honor that was considered impugned, and any monetary sanctions would go to him. Not here.

Finally, we learn something about sacred and profane. …

Two Cases Of Apostasy In Dubno In 1716 Jews, Christians, And Family Life, Magda Teter

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This text relates a trial of two Christian women who accepted to Judaism that took place in the city of Dubno in eastern Poland in 1716. The text presented here comes from a collection of primary sources published in Kiev [now Kyiv] in 1869, as part of effort by scholars at the time to collect and publish primary source materials about Ukraine. The collection is called Arkhiv Iugo-zapadnoi Rossii, or The Archive of South-Western Russia, and contains documents from the South-Western part of Ukraine.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Two Cases of Apostasy in Dubno in 1716

Juveniles In Early Modern Jewish-Italian Communities Between Family Control And Kabbalistic Piety, Roni Weinstein

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The presentation discusses conceptions of childhood, youth, and marriage in Italian Jewish Culture.

The text reproduced is an excerpt from a mid-seventeenth century work by Pinhas Baruch Monselice.

“The First Duty Of Nature Is To Preserve Life” A Jewish Woman’S Plea For Divorce In Late 18th-Century Trieste, Lois Dubin

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The presentation discusses a letter from Relle [Rachele] Morschene (1770-1844) of Trieste to Chief Rabbi Raffael Natan Tedesco, written in the throes of her three-year long effort to extricate herself from her marriage to husband Lucio Luzzatto (1755-1801). From 1793 to 1796, Morschene pursued separation and civil divorce through the Habsburg courts at the same time as a Jewish religious divorce. Indeed, she was one of the first European Jewish women to seek and obtain a civil divorce. Her legal situation was novel because Jews in the Habsburg Monarchy were among the first to be subjected to civil marriage regulation …

The Woodstruck Deed The Documentation Of Accidental Defloration Among The Jews Of Early Modern Italy, David Malkiel

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The “woodstruck” (mukat ets) deed, a Hebrew document that officially records the accidental defloration of a young girl, appears in sixteenth-century Italy, in a block of deeds recorded by Jewish notaries in Rome, in a rabbinic responsum and in the record book of the Padua community. Prior to that, there is no record of such an instrument anywhere in Jewish history and literature, despite the fact that the frequency of accidental defloration must have been a constant. Moreover, the registers of the Jewish notaries of sixteenth-century Rome contain over a hundred such deeds for the sixteenth century alone. The appearance …

Jewish Women And Economic Encounters With Christians, Debra Kaplan

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

R. Yair Hayyim ben Moses Samson Bacharach (1638-1702) is well-known for his knowledge of halakha and Kabbalah. Over the course of his lifetime, he served as the rabbi in several locations in the Holy Roman Empire. In these two responsa, Bacharach deals with one of the halakhic problems surrounding women’s trade with non-Jews. Such trade inevitably caused women to enter into seclusion (yihud) with non-Jews, especially since according to Jewish law, the presence of the non-Jew’s wife did not alleviate the prohibition of seclusion with a non-Jew.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Havvot Yair, Responsum 66
• Havvot Yair, …

Unequal Opportunities The Economic Possibilities Open To Jewish Women In 18th Century Poland-Lithuania, Adam Teller

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following texts present an image of economic opportunities, and gender roles in Jewish society in eastern Europe. The first text is an 18th-century supplication by a Jew, Bunim Szlomowicz, against his wife; the second is a 1751 decree by the Council of Lithuania regulating women's roles in trade.

Marriage And Networkbuilding, Claudia Ulbrich

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In eastern France Jewish marriages are well documented in the eighteenth century. Following a decree by Louis XIV in 1701 that Jewish marriage contracts had to be deposited with notaries within 15 days of marriage, these documents were registered with increasing frequency in the entire French-German region. Registration became generally obligatory in that time, so that we have large amounts of documents both for Christian as for Jews. Historians have never fully analyzed these files. Jean Fleury, who was prompted by genealogical interests, surveyed the 8500 items in the Metz archive, and compiled 2021 marriage contracts from the seventeenth and …

Pinkas Shamash Altona (1766-1767), Elisheva Carlebach

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Elisheva Carlebach's presentation discusses excerpts from the Pinkas Shamash Altona, providing a glimpse on an aspect of Jewish life that usually remained obscured--illegitimate children born to Jewish domestic servants, and the servants themselves, held very marginal status in the community. One of the pertinent issue was death. If they died the responsibility for buying them was contested between many different parties.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Pinkas Shamash Altona (1766-1767)

Click here for a video presentation.

Jewish Marriage In Christian Eyes, Yaacov Deutsch

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation deals with a Christian description of early modern Jewish marriage rituals. The text is a translation of a chapter on Jewish marriage from Johannes Buxtorf's "Synagoga Judaica" or "Jewish Synagogue" (1603).

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Synagoga Judaica (The Jewish Synagogue) by Johannes Buxtorf (1603)

Ordering Early Modern Marriage, Elisheva Baumgarten

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In this presentation, Elisheva Baumgarten discusses marriage rituals as recorded by a seventeenth-century Jewish author of a book of customs (sefer minhagim), which became popular in the early modern period. Baumgarten compares Yuspa of Worms' work with materials from the medieval period. She also places Jewish marriage rituals within the context of non-Jewish cultures of the time.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• The Custom book of R. Juspa of Worms (17th century)

Click here to view the video

Emw 2006: Gender, Family, And Social Structures, Emw 2006

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2006 Early Modern Workshop on the topic of “Gender, Family, and Social Structures” addressed a spectrum of topics about the transformation of the concept and form of family in general, and of Jewish family in particular in the early modern period.

The workshop took up questions of: marriage rituals, as represented by early modern (Elisheva Baumgarten) and Christians (Jacob Deutsch), and marriage contracts (Ruth Lamdan), responsibilities of the Jewish community to women and out-of-wedlock children (Elisheva Carlebach), challenges to marriage and marital propriety (Debra Kaplan on rabbinic responses to Jewish women’s encounters with Christian men; David Malkiel and Kenneth …

Emancipation Through Secularization: French Feminist Views Of Muslim Women’S Condition In Interwar Algeria, Sara L. Kimble

School of Continuing and Professional Studies Faculty and Staff Works

Cet article examine la condition des musulmanes algériennes telle que vue par des féministes françaises entre les deux guerres mondiales. Une série de colloques nationaux et internationaux dans la région méditerranéenne analysa les limitations imposées sur les filles et les femmes musulmanes par la tradition patriarcale et s'adressa au gouvernement pour demander des réformes. Cet article démontre que ces féministes françaises approuvaient la « mission civilisatrice » de la France et conseillaient des mesures visant la modernisation, « le progrès » et la laïcité en Algérie. Alors que ces féministes orientalistes critiquaient le Code Civil de 1804 comme une source …

The Duke’S Devil And Doctor Lambe’S Darling: A Case Study Of The Male Witch In Early Modern England, Karin Amundsen

Psi Sigma Siren

The witch-hunt in early modern England has been the subject of much scholarly research in the last several decades. While much of this research focuses on the political, religious, economic, and social aspects of the witch-hunts, the role of gender in the trials has recently come under more scrutiny, though much of it focuses on women. Although the role of women in the witch-hunts is unquestionably important given that accusations primarily targeted them, historians should not ignore male witches or simply dismiss them as spouses or relatives of female witches. Compounding the exclusion of male witches from historical consideration is …

The "Powerful", Molly Kay Gale

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

History is written by the powerful. It is true that since the 1960s and the beginnings of the democratization of history, less powerful minorities have taken up the pen and more profusely expressed their views of history, but to a great extent, white males have engrained their view of history into people’s minds. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps because of its appealing nature, or perhaps for both reasons, the Renaissance stands out in people’s minds as a definitive period in history—a period during which, arguably, intellectual and cultural progress swept across Europe.

The driving force behind much of the intellectual …

‘For The Family, France, And Humanity’: Authority And Maternity In The Tribunaux Pour Enfants, Sara L. Kimble

School of Continuing and Professional Studies Faculty and Staff Works

No abstract provided.

Women Writers In Revolution: Feminism In Germaine De Staël And Ding Ling, Sara Powell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In this essay, the concern is feminism in the writings of the two revolutionary women, Germaine de Stael, who lived and wrote during the French revolutionary era, and Ding Ling, who lived and wrote during the Chinese Communist revolutionary era. The main theme of the essay is to determine whether the feminism in their work is of a similar nature despite the vast differences in the times and places in which they each lived. Concomitantly, the theme is also an attempt to discover through such similarities if feminism is of a universal nature. Through biographical sketches and analysis of selected …

Images Of Women In The Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Revival, Karen Louise Foster

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Nineteenth-century interest in the late Anglo-Saxon, or pre-conquest woman has been almost entirely erased from literary history. This dissertation recovers nineteenth century interest in the late Anglo-Saxon woman (between the eighth and eleventh centuries) in an analytical and descriptive survey which points out nineteenth-century roots of twentieth-century biases that continue to shape Anglo-Saxon scholarship. Nineteenth-century writers recovered Anglo-Saxon portrayals of women in various ways: by writing histories of Anglo-Saxon times; through translation of Beowulf, Judith, Juliana and Elene; and in writing historical fiction. In every instance, recovery meant reconstruction of the past. Nineteenth-century reconstructions of the Anglo-Saxon time period have …

0064: Marshall University Oral History Collection, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Tape recordings and transcripts of oral interviews with residents in the West Virginia-Ohio-Kentucky Tri-State region regarding such topics as farming, schools, health care, folk customs, and many others related to life in this Appalachian region.

To view materials from this collection that are digitized and available online, search the Marshall University Oral History Collection here.

An Investigation To Discover A Better Than Normal Way To Teach Reading In A Fifth-Grade History Class, Victor P. Miles

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.