Natalie Zemon Davis

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Natalie Zemon Davis

Cranbrook Kingswood School
SpouseChandler Davis

Natalie Zemon Davis, CC (November 8, 1928 – October 21, 2023) was an American-Canadian historian of the early modern period. She was the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University. Her work originally focused on France, but it later broadened to include other parts of Europe, North America, and the Caribbean. For example, her book, Trickster Travels (2006), views Italy, Spain, Morocco and other parts of North Africa and West Africa through the lens of Leo Africanus's pioneering geography. (By 2023, the text had appeared in six translations.) Davis' books have all been translated into other languages: twenty-two for The Return of Martin Guerre. She was the second female president of the American Historical Association (the first, Nellie Neilson, was in 1943).

Davis was awarded the

Holberg International Memorial Prize and National Humanities Medal and was named Companion of the Order of Canada
.

Life

Natalie Zemon Davis (

Cranbrook Kingswood School and she was subsequently educated at Smith College, Radcliffe College, Harvard University, and the University of Michigan, from which she received her PhD in 1959. Her dissertation treated religion and class among the printers of Lyon in the 16th century.[5] In 1948, she met and married the mathematician and activist Chandler Davis (1926–2022).[6] Natalie became involved in left-wing politics while at Smith College[1] and the couple had difficulties in the U.S. during the era of the Red Scare. Chandler Davis lost his professorship in Michigan, and in the 1960s, the couple moved to Canada with their three children.[6]

Natalie Zemon Davis subsequently taught at

University of California at Berkeley, and from 1978 to her retirement in 1996, at Princeton University, where she became the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies. In addition to courses in the history of early modern France, she has taught and co-taught courses in history and anthropology, early modern Jewish social history, and history and film. She was also an important figure in the study of the history of women and gender—founding, with Jill Ker Conway
, a course in that subject in 1971 at the University of Toronto (one of the first such courses in North America).

Following her retirement, she lived in Toronto, where she was Adjunct Professor of History and Anthropology and Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. She died of cancer at her home in Toronto on October 21, 2023, at the age of 94.[7][2]

Research interests

Natalie Davis' main interests were in the

pamphlets, autobiographies and folk tales.[8] She is a proponent of cross-disciplinary history, which consists of combining history with disciplines such as anthropology, ethnography and literary theory.[9] In her Society and Culture in Early Modern France (1975), she explored the lives of artisans and peasants: their relation to the Protestant Reformation, their carnivals, uprisings, and religious violence, and the impact of printing on their ways of thinking.[10]

In her book best known to the public, The Return of Martin Guerre (1983), she followed a celebrated case of a

The Financial Times described Zemon Davis as a "pioneer of microhistory".[1]

Davis's interest in story-telling continued with her book, Fiction in the Archives:

entomologist-artist Maria Sibylla Merian—and discussed the role of religion in their lives.[11]

Her book on The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (2000) is both a picture of gifts and bribes in the 16th century and a discussion of a viable mode of exchange different from the market. In Trickster Travels (2006), she describes how the early 16th-century North African Muslim "

plantations of Christian and Jewish settlers.[14]

Davis's historical writings sometimes resorted to speculation through her use of analogous evidence and inserting words like "perhaps" and phrases like "she may have thought." Some critics of her work find this troubling and think that this practice threatens the empirical base of the historian's profession.[citation needed] Davis's answer to this is suggested in her 1992 essay "Stories and the Hunger to Know", where she argues both for the role of interpretation by historians and their essential quest for evidence about the past: both must be present and acknowledged to keep people from claiming that they have an absolute handle on "truth".[15] She opened her Women on the Margins with an imaginary dialogue, in which her three subjects upbraid her for her approach and for putting them in the same book. In her Slaves on Screen (2000), Davis maintains that feature films can provide a valuable way of telling about the past, what she calls "thought experiments", but only so long as they are connected with general historical evidence.[16]

Awards and recognition

Natalie Zemon Davis received several honorary degrees from universities around the world including Smith College,[27] Northwestern University,[28] Wesleyan University[29] the University of Rochester[30] George Washington University[31] Williams College,[32] Tufts University,[33] the University of Toronto,[34] the University of Pennsylvania,[35] Harvard University,[36] the University of Edinburgh,[37] the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, [38] Concordia University,[39] Amherst College,[40] Yale University[41] the University of St Andrews,[42][43] Mount Saint Vincent University[44][45] and Western University.[46]

Works

  • "The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France", Past & Present Volume 59 (May 1973): pages 51–91.
  • Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays, Stanford University Press, 1975.
  • "'Women's History" in Transition': the European Case", Feminist Studies Volume 3, no. 3 (Spring-Summer 1976): pages 83–103.
  • "Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth-Century France", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Volume 33 (1983): pages 69–88.
  • The Return of Martin Guerre, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
  • Frauen und Gesellschaft am Beginn der Neuzeit, Berlin: Wagenbach, 1986.
  • Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth Century France, Stanford University Press, 1987.
  • "Gender in the Academy: Women and Learning from Plato to Princeton: An Exhibition Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Undergraduate Coeducation at Princeton University" / organized by Natalie Zemon Davis ... [et al.]: Princeton University Library, 1990.
  • "Stories and the Hunger to Know," Yale Journal of Criticism Volume 5, no. 2 (Spring 1992): pages 159–163.
  • Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes, co-edited with Arlette Farge, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1993. Volume III of A History of Women in the West. [Originally published in Italian in 1991.]
  • Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
  • A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1997, New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1997.
  • "Religion and Capitalism Once Again? Jewish Merchant Culture in the Seventeenth Century" from Representations no. 59 (Summer 1997): pages 56–84.
  • Remaking Impostors: From Martin Guerre to Sommersby, Egham, Surrey, UK: Royal Holloway Publications Unit, 1997.
  • The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France, University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.
  • Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
  • Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds New York: Hill & Wang, 2006.[47]
  • Leo Africanus Discovers Comedy: Theatre and Poetry Across the Mediterranean. Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2021.
  • Listening to the Languages of the People: Lazare Sainéan on Romanian, Yiddish, and French. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2022,[48]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Barber, Tony (October 28, 2023). "Natalie Zemon Davis, pioneer of microhistory, 1928-2023". The Financial Times. Retrieved October 28, 2023.
  2. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  3. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis". The National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
  4. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
  5. ^ Davis, Natalie Ann Zemon. "Protestantism and the Printing Workers of Lyons: A Study in the Problem of Religion and Social Class During the Reformation." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1959. Proquest dissertations (subscription required).
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-1-59921-122-0
    .
  7. ^ Leal, Bruno (October 23, 2023). "Morre a historiadora Natalie Zemon Davis". Café História. Retrieved October 23, 2023.
  8. JSTOR 25595753
    .
  9. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis, History, University of Toronto | Townsend Center for the Humanities". townsendcenter.berkeley.edu. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
  10. ISBN 978-0-8047-0868-5
    .
  11. ^ a b c "Natalie Zemon Davis". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved August 16, 2021.
  12. ^ "Martin Guerre: fictional character". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2021.
  13. ^ Christian Rioux, "Wajid Mouawad triomphe a Paris,"Le Devoir, December 5, 2017.
  14. ^ Herschthal, Eric (August 17, 2006). "A Star Historian Opens a New Chapter: Jewish Slaveowners". The Forward. Retrieved June 18, 2020.
  15. ^ Davis, Natalie Zemon (Spring 1992). "Stories and the Hunger to Know". ProQuest. pp. 159–163. Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  16. ^ Contemporary Literary Criticism vol. 204, "Special issue on Natalie Zemon Davis, 1928–", pp. 1–65 (2005).
  17. ^ CBC Arts, "U of T Scholar Wins $768,000 Holberg Prize."
  18. ^ "In Memoriam: 2010 Holberg Laureate Natalie Zemon Davis". Holbergprisen. Retrieved November 4, 2023.
  19. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved April 2, 2021.
  20. ^ CBC Canada, "Ralph Klein, Pat Quinn named to Order of Canada"
  21. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis' Order of Canada Citation". Governor General of Canada. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  22. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis' Order of Canada Profile". Governor General of Canada. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  23. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis' Diamond Jubilee Medal Citation". Governor General of Canada. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  24. ^ President Obama to Award 2012 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal White House. Retrieved June 30, 2013
  25. ISBN 0472104705
    .
  26. S2CID 163683355
    – via Gale.
  27. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients". Smith College. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  28. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients". Northwestern University. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  29. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients". Wesleyan University. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  30. ^ "Complete Listing of Honorary Degree Recipients". University of Rochester. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  31. ^ "George Washington University Honorary Degree Recipients 1827-2021". George Washington University. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  32. ^ "Honorary Degrees Database". Williams College. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  33. ^ "Honorary Degrees". Tufts University. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  34. ^ "University of Toronto Honorary Degree Recipients 1850-2021" (PDF). University of Toronto. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  35. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients" (PDF). University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  36. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients 1981-2021" (PDF). Harvard University. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
  37. ^ "University of Edinburgh Honorary Degrees Database". University of Edinburgh. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  38. ^ "Honorary Degree Recipients Database". Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Retrieved November 3, 2021.
  39. ^ "Honorary degree citation - Natalie Zemon Davis". Concordia University. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  40. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis | Honorary Degree Recipients | Amherst College". www.amherst.edu. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
  41. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis | Honorary Degree Recipients | Yale University". Yale University. May 20, 2013. Retrieved January 10, 2023.
  42. ^ "Laureation address: Professor Natalie Zemon Davis". University of St Andrews. Retrieved August 16, 2021.
  43. ^ "University of St Andrews Honorary Degrees". University of St Andrews. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  44. ^ "Natalie Zemon Davis, Chantal St-Cyr Hébert and Kathleen Taylor to receive honorary degrees". Mount Saint Vincent University. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  45. ^ "Honorary Degrees". Mount Saint Vincent University. Retrieved November 2, 2021.
  46. ^ "Western News - Natalie Zemon Davis to receive honorary degree". Western News. October 20, 2021. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
  47. ^ Buchan, James (January 13, 2007). "Review of Trickster Travels by Natalie Zemon Davis". The Guardian.
  48. ^ "Listening to the Languages of the People | Reviews in History". reviews.history.ac.uk. Retrieved April 15, 2023.

Sources

  • Adams, R.M. Review of Fiction in the Archives page 35 from New York Review of Books, Volume 34, Issue No. 4, March 16, 1989.
  • Adelson, R. Interview with Natalie Zemon Davis pages 405–422 from Historian Volume 53, Issue No. 3, 1991.
  • Benson, E. "The Look of the Past: Le Retour de Martin Guerre" pages 125–135 from Radical History Review, Volume 28, 1984.
  • Bossy, J. "As it Happened: Review of Fiction in the Archives", pages 359 from Times Literacy Supplement, Issue 4488, April 7, 1989.
  • Chartier, Roger Cultural History Between Practices and Representations, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988.
  • Coffin, J. & Harding. R. "Interview with Natalie Zemon Davis " pages 99–122 from Visions of History edited by H. Abelove, B. Blackmar, P.Dimock & J. Schneer, Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1984.
  • Diefendorf, Barbara and Hesse, Carla (editors) Culture and Identity in Early Modern France (1500–1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
  • Finlay, R. "The Refashioning of Martin Guerre" pages 553–571 from American Historical Review Volume 93, Issue #3, 1988.
  • Guneratne, A. "Cinehistory and the Puzzling Case of Martin Guerre" pages 2–19 from Film and History, Volume 21, Issue # 1, 1991.
  • Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel "Double Trouble: Review of The Return of Martin Guerre" pages 12–13 from The New York Review of Books, Volume 30, Issue #20, December 22, 1983.
  • O'Connor, J.E (editor) Images as Artifact: the Historical Analysis of Film and Television, Malabar, Florida: R.E. Krieger, 1990.
  • Orest, R. Review of Women on the Margins pages 808–810 from American Historical Review, Volume 102, Issue #3, 1997.
  • Quinn, A. Review of Women on the Margins page 18 from New York Times Review of Books, December 10, 1995.
  • Roelker, N.L. Review of Fiction in the Archives pages 1392–1393 from American Historical Review Volume 94, Issue #5, 1989.
  • Roper, L. Review of Women on the Margins pages 4–5 from Times Literacy Supplement 4868, July 19, 1996.
  • Snowman, Daniel "Natalie Zemon Davis" pages 18–20 from History Today Volume 52 Issue October 10, 2002.

External links


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