Jay M. Smith

John Van Seters Distinguished Term Professor M.A. Northern Illinois University, 1985 Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1990

Research Interests

Jay M. Smith is a specialist of early-modern France, with a particular focus on the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the history of aristocratic identity. Among his chief publications on the history of the early-modern French nobility are: The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600-1789 (Ann Arbor, 1996); Nobility Reimagined: The Patriotic Nation in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, N. Y., 2005); and an edited volume, The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: Reassessments and New Approaches (University Park, Pa., 2006). Smith also has strong interests in theoretical issues involving the relationship between social "experience" and its representations, historical analysis of political and cultural vocabularies, and the methodological assumptions underlying the practice of cultural history. Most of his publications have used the subject of changing aristocratic culture(s) to reflect on these broad theoretical concerns. Smith's current research focuses on the history of the "beast of the Gévaudan," a real 18^th century horror story that revolved around the killing of scores of women and children by a mysterious and evidently diabolical creature that roamed the hillsides of southern France in the 1760s.

Smith has taught courses on the French Revolution, France in the Age of Reason, Late Medieval and Early Modern France, 18^th century Europe, Aristocratic Identity in the Early Modern Atlantic World, Louis XIV, and a variety of graduate seminars on early-modern Europe and France. He can be reached by e-mail at jaysmith@email.unc.edu.

Graduate Students Advised by Jay Smith

• Joseph Bryan
  
• Natasha Naujoks
• Julia Osman
• Michael Uchrin

Courses Offered (as Schedules Allow)

For current course listings, consult the Directory of Classes.

• HIST 456 -- France in the Age of Enlightenment, 1715-1787
• HIST 457 -- The French Revolution, 1787-1815
• HIST 459 -- France in the Age of Monarchy, 1337-1715
• HIST 516 -- Historical Time
• HIST 776 -- Topics in the History of Modern France, 1500-Present
• HIST 765 -- Problems in the History of the French Revolution

Contact

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Department of History

CB #3195, Hamilton Hall

Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195