Associate Professor of History
Office: Swift 32
Phone: 437-5665
Contact Mita Choudhury
Mita Choudhury received her B.A. from Haverford College (1985), an M.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1988), and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University (1997). Her areas of research involve gender, political culture, and religion in the Old Regime. Her book Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Culture (Cornell, 2004) examines the how the conflicts between nuns and male clergy, among nuns themselves, and between nuns and their families played out in the larger political culture of pre-Revolutionary France. Legal, cultural, and literary sources indicate that the cloister operated as a symbol of despotism, and touched on potent issues such as citizenship, female education and sexuality. Professor Choudhury’s current research on the trial of Catherine Cadiére, which took place in 1731, continues this line of inquiry. It examines how the hostilities between the Jesuits and Jansenists played out in this lurid and highly-publicized case of seduction, heresy, witchcraft, and betrayal. The project has been accepted by Prentice-Hall’s new series, Microhistory Series in Western Civilization, which Professor Choudhury is co-editing with Steven Ozment Professor Choudhury teaches the early modern Europe and Old Regime France.