Un courage viril. Genre et violence dans les Guerres de religion en France

Intervention donnée dans le cadre du séminaire de l'IHR (Université de Genève). Dans ce séminaire Brian Sandberg présentera le projet de son prochain livre.

Présentation 

My book project, A Virile Courage: Gender and Violence in the French Wars of Religion, concerns the gendered nature of violence and political culture in early modern French history. This study will provide the first detailed investigation of the relationships between gender and violence in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France, exploring various dimensions of femininity and masculinity in the conditions of sustained religious conflict between opposing groups of Catholic and Calvinist militants. Manuscripts and printed sources unearthed in French archives demonstrate that many men had unexpected relationships to violence and that women were intimately involved in religious warfare. My research challenges the common notion that warfare is an exclusively masculine domain, forcing us to rethink gender’s role in the broader history of violence. The resulting book will provide an engaging examination of the role of gender in confessional conflict during the French Wars of Religion, contributing new perspectives on the dynamics of gendered violence, feminine activism, and gender relations in wartime.