Dr. Sydney Watts

Associate Professor of History

218 Ryland Hall
Office: (804) 289-8339
Fax: (804) 287-1992

On sabbatical leave 2008-2009 

My current research is on the history of Lent in early modern French cities. This study examines Lenten practices and beliefs and how they changed with the development of the Enlightenment self. I focus on the quotidian negotiation of the laws and customs of Lent, in light of metaphysical questions of how the temporal meets the spiritual, to illuminate the complex relationship between food, the body, and belief. The convergence of both scientific and holy circles brings into focus one of the central problems in the history of religious life: how piety and self-discipline changed with the rise of secular ideas and scientific discoveries about nutrition and digestion. This project compares the regulation and disciplining of Christian life across several centuries, among various social groups, in a number of urban contexts.

Research:
Early modern Europe, 18th century France

Education:
Cornell University, Ph.D., 1999

Selected Publications:

Meat Matters: Butchers, Politics and Market Culture in Eighteenth-Century Paris. (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press,  (July 2006).

"Meat for the Multitudes: Market Culture in Paris, New York City, and Mexico City over the "Long" Nineteenth Century," American Historical Review, 109:4 (October 2004): 1055-1083.

"Boucherie et hygiène à Paris au XVIIIe siècle," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 51:3 (juillet-septembre 2004): 79-103.