Julia Anne Landweber
Assistant Professor
History and Women's Studies

Montclair State University
Research                         
About Me
My recent research has focused on reconstructing the impact early modern relations between France and the Ottoman Empire had upon eighteenth-century French culture and identity formation. Today's strained relationship between the civilizations of Islam and the West demonstrates a profound need to better understand the ties which have historically bound these two worlds. Using diplomatic records, travel and literary works, and popular engravings, my work of the past ten years examines how conflicting French images of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire were employed in the creation of individual and national identities within Old Regime France between the 1660s and the 1780s.

 I have published four articles on turquerie, with more planned for the future. I have also recently embarked on a new project about Sophie Germain, a Napoleonic-era French mathematician.
I am an assistant professor of early modern European history and women's studies at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey. I've taught at Montclair from 2003 to the present; previously I was a visiting assistant professor at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2003. I received my Ph.D. in history from Rutgers University in 2001, working under the principle supervision of Professor Phyllis Mack, with additional guidance from Professor Jennifer Jones of Rutgers and Professor David A. Bell of Johns Hopkins University. In 1989 I received my B.A. from Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
 

Selected Publications

"Was Sophie Germain Revolutionary? Reexamining the Education of an Early Female Mathematician," 2007 Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (pub. date 2008) [Forthcoming].

"Fashioning Nationality and Identity in the Eighteenth Century: The Comte de Bonneval in the Ottoman Empire," The International History Review, March 2008: 1-31.

"The Grand Vizier of France and the Bourgeois Turk: Setting the Stage for the Le Bourgeois gentilhomme," Cahiers du Dix-Septième [Forthcoming, date TBA].

"Celebrating Identity: Charting the History of Turkish Masquerade in Early Modern France," Romance Studies, Vol. 23 (3), November 2005.

"Turkish Delight: The Eighteenth-Century Market in Turqueries and the Commercialization of Identity in France," Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, Vol. 30 (University Press of Colorado, 2004).

"Renaissance and Reformation" in The History Highway 3.0 (Third Edition), ed. Dennis Trinkle and Scott Merriman (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2002).

Presentations

[Forthcoming] “How Can One Be Turkish? French Responses to Two Ottoman Ambassadors,” to be delivered at the Annual Conference of the German Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Bonn, Germany, October 9-11, 2008.

[Forthcoming] “Reconsidering the Life of French Mathematician Sophie Germain,” to be delivered at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Minneapolis, MN, June 12-15, 2008.

“Knocking at the Gates of the Academy of Science: A Female Mathematician in Revolutionary Paris,” to be delivered at the annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies, New Brunswick, NJ, April 11-13, 2008.

“Sophie Germain’s Challenge: Acquiring a Mathematical Education in Eighteenth-Century France,” delivered at the 28th Annual Women’s Studies Conference, SUNY New Paltz, October 6, 2007.

“Serious Play: The Evolution of Turkish Masquerade in France, 1662-1748.” Invited keynote address, delivered at the 29th Annual Warren Susman Graduate Student Conference, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, March 30, 2007.

“Was Sophie Germain Revolutionary? Reexamining the Career of An Early Female Mathematician,” delivered at the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era Annual Meeting, Arlington, VA, March 1-3, 2007.

"The Man Who Exchanged His Hat for a Turban: An Eighteenth-Century Convert to Islam," invited lecture delivered at the annual MSU Humanities in the Schools Day, Dec. 19, 2005, Montclair, NJ.

"Louis XIV and the Grand Vizier of France: The Original Masquerade Behind Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," delivered at the 24th Annual Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeeth-Century Studies, Oct. 6-9, 2005, Brunswick, ME.

"La Caravane du Sultan à la Mecque: The French Contribution to the 1748 Carnival in Rome," delivered at "Celebration!," the 2004 Romance Studies Colloquium, October 14-16, 2004, Jersey City, NJ.

"Comment" to Session 151, "French Pan-European Encounters in the Nineteenth Century," at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 11, 2004, Washington, DC.

"Turkish Delight: The Eighteenth-Century Market in Turqueries and the Commercialization of Identity in France," delivered at the annual meeting of the Western Society for French History, October 3-5, 2002, Baltimore, MD.

"French Delight in Turkey: The Impact of Turquerie on Identity Construction in Eighteenth-Century France," delivered at the College Art Association 90th Annual Conference, February 20-23, 2002, Philadelphia, PA.

"Venetian Vagabonds, Albanian Bandits, and Furious Frenchmen: Conflict Resolution Among the European Nations in Istanbul, 1729," delivered at "Mapping the Nation," the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Northeast Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, October 26-29, 2000, Portland, ME.

"The Case of the Comte de Bonneval: Conflicts of Gender, Nation, and Identity in the Experience of an Eighteenth-Century French Convert to Islam," delivered at the seminar "Conversion: of money, goods, people, faiths and fetishes," hosted by Princeton University and the National Maritime Museum, October 15, 1999, Greenwich, U.K..

"The Case of the Comte de Bonneval: Conflicts of Gender, Nation, and Identity in the Experience of an Eighteenth-Century French Convert to Islam," delivered at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 7-10, 1999, Washington, DC.