Books by Rachel Mesch
Stanford University Press, 2020
Having it All in the Belle Epoque examines the beautiful, high-achieving modern woman promoted by... more Having it All in the Belle Epoque examines the beautiful, high-achieving modern woman promoted by two wildly successful Belle Epoque women’s magazines, Femina and La Vie Heureuse, and the popular novels associated with them. The female role model celebrated in these publications—in text and often in stunning image—was a bundle of new contradictions as she considered career and corsets in equal measure and aspired at once towards independence,love and marriage. Although her balancing acts may now seem all too familiar, she presented a deliberately stark contrast to the mannish suffragettes and eccentric New Women of her time. Inscribing this figure in the history of modern femininity, this book challenges the very terms traditionally used by scholars of twentieth-century French feminism. At the same time, it addresses issues that continue to inspire passionate twenty-first century debates on both sides of the Atlantic about how to reconcile feminism with femininity.
Podcasts and Talks by Rachel Mesch
An interview about Having it All in the Belle Epoque
An interview about Before Trans: Three Gender Stories from Nineteenth-Century France
Articles by Rachel Mesch
Dix-Neuf, 2022
Gender-focused studies of nineteenth-century French literature and history in the last few decade... more Gender-focused studies of nineteenth-century French literature and history in the last few decades have often relied on heteronormative and gender normative paradigms. Using Rachilde as an example, I demonstrate how trans studies can offer tools through which to recover the gender-creative past. These tools are meant to work in concert with feminist and queer theories, while centering gender in a broad sense by focusing on challenges to the gender binary, modes of gender expression, attention to the material body, and a felt sense of gender.
Yale French Studies, 2021
questions surrounding gender and sexuality in their work. Th ey composed their initial essays in ... more questions surrounding gender and sexuality in their work. Th ey composed their initial essays in advance of the 2019 Nineteenth-Century French Studies colloquium, held in Sarasota, Florida; the ensuing exchange took place in the form of a roundtable discussion at the colloquium and aft erwards, in response to the questions raised during the discussion. a paradigm in which the objects we study determine the quality and politics of our work. Th is logic, which equates politics with referentiality, underlies our turn away from theory and literary analysis toward cultural studies and the archives. If we want to regain an "ideological edge" (Schor), I contend that we must embrace the politics of reading, and the improper logic of literary criticism: a collaborative practice of thinking with literary, critical, and theoretical texts, and thinking together across boundaries of shared objects and subfi elds. (JT)
The famed French explorer and writer Jane Dieulafoy became a celebrity in the late nineteenth cen... more The famed French explorer and writer Jane Dieulafoy became a celebrity in the late nineteenth century for the discoveries that she and her husband, Marcel, made on their excursions in Persia. Dieulafoy wore pants during this time and upon resettling in Paris acquired a permit from the Parisian police to wear men’s clothing, even as she was embraced by the socially conservative literary and political elite. Recognizing Dieulafoy through the modern notion of transgender allows us to make sense of that seeming contradiction. Two of her long-overlooked novels, Volontaire (1892) and Frère Pélage (1894), can be read as early transgender narratives. Through their gender-crossing protagonists, these texts provide an intellectual framework for understanding how Dieulafoy reconciled her gender expression with the religious and social structures that she held dear.
http://fhs.dukejournals.org/content/35/1/93.abstract
Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Jan 1, 2003
The Sex of Science: Medicine, Naturalism, and Feminism in Lucie Delarue-Mardrus's Marie,... more The Sex of Science: Medicine, Naturalism, and Feminism in Lucie Delarue-Mardrus's Marie, Fille-Mere. by Rachel L. Mesch Throughout the late nineteenth century in France, intellectuals from a variety of disciplines took part in what Foucault has.
The Romanic Review, Jan 1, 1998
DID WOMEN HAVE AN ENLIGHTENMENT? GRAFFIGNY'S ZILIA AS FEMALE PHILOSOPHE. by Rachel L. Me... more DID WOMEN HAVE AN ENLIGHTENMENT? GRAFFIGNY'S ZILIA AS FEMALE PHILOSOPHE. by Rachel L. Mesch In her article.
Journal of the History of Sexuality, Jan 1, 2008
In large part in the interest of nurturing France's vulnerable birthrate, which had begu... more In large part in the interest of nurturing France's vulnerable birthrate, which had begun declining by midcentury, nineteenth-century doctors began not only to allow for but also to insist upon mutual sexual pleasure within the context of conjugal relations, injecting a measured amount of ...
Dix-Neuf, Jan 1, 2008
"Aujourd'hui le mariage religieux n&#x2... more "Aujourd'hui le mariage religieux n'a plus la même importance", writes Auguste Debay, in his 1851 Philosophie du mariage. "Complètement nul en matière civile, il n'est regardé que comme une simple formalité" (51). It should come as no surprise that this comment was written by ...
Vanderbilt University Press
Uploads
Books by Rachel Mesch
Podcasts and Talks by Rachel Mesch
Articles by Rachel Mesch