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Ben Bernard

@drbernard.bsky.social
137 followers 40 following 27 posts

Historian of early modern France; postdoctoral associate at Yale. benjaminsbernard.com

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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I'm excited to be back in Charlottesville to speak at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture about trust in universities! Hope to see folks tomorrow!
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
How does the history of universities inform our approaches to the loss of trust in higher education today? I'll be speaking at UVA on Tuesday about this Hedgehog Review special issue, and about my work on the Yale Report. Details/RSVP: iasculture.org/event/august...
iasculture.org
Public Forum - "The Crisis in Higher Education: Lessons Past and Present" featuring Hedgehog Review authors David Austin Walsh and Benjamin S. Bernard - Institute For Advanced Studies in Culture
The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture invites you to join us for a conversation at Watson Manor with Hedgehog Review authors titled, "The Crisis in
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
But hey, good for the LRB for discovering ragebait?
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
www.societyforfrenchhistoricalstudies.net/the-william-...
societyforfrenchhistoricalstudies.net
Koren Jr. Prize — SFHS
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Some cool news: my last article was recognized with the Honorable Mention distinction for the Koren Prize, just awarded by the Society for French Historical Studies for the “most outstanding article on any period of French history” in the previous calendar year by a scholar based in the USA/Canada:
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Anna-Lujz Gilbert @annalujz.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
*small embarrassed voice* A little plug for my article on Devon book sales c. 1700, which has gone online open access. tl;dr book auctions weren't just a London/Oxbridge thing: a flourishing second-hand book market centred on Exeter included auctions from the 1680s. doi.org/10.1093/libr...
doi.org
A Provincial Market in Second-Hand Books: Book Sales in Devon, 1688–1725
Abstract. Comparatively little is known about England’s early book-auction trade outside of London and the university towns, with few catalogues surviving
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Yale has announced our upcoming visiting speaker series as well as my spring seminar on the history of institutional legitimacy in higher education: news.yale.edu/2025/10/06/c...
news.yale.edu
Committee on Trust in Higher Ed launches speaker series
After months of research and discussion, the committee is launching a series that aims to advance campus dialogue and explore creative solutions to some of the most pressing issues facing higher education.
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Yale has announced our upcoming visiting speaker series as well as my spring seminar on the history of institutional legitimacy in higher education: news.yale.edu/2025/10/06/c...
news.yale.edu
Committee on Trust in Higher Ed launches speaker series
After months of research and discussion, the committee is launching a series that aims to advance campus dialogue and explore creative solutions to some of the most pressing issues facing higher education.
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Thank you!!
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Thanks for sharing those screenshots — a classic volume, and what a cool passage there. Sounds like a dream course to teach!!
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Awesome!! Thanks, Liesbeth!
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Terrific! I hope it might be useful.
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Thank you! 🙏
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
I'd be interested in the reference/citation too!
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Thank you Julie!! It was really helpful to think with your Lyon book for this one on the relationship between state actors, bureaucracy, & everyday practices of sexuality...
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
9️⃣ Thanks to the journal editors and Duke UP, the article is free to read on an exceptional basis through Dec 31, 2025: read.dukeupress.edu/french-histo... 🎁📅
read.dukeupress.edu
The Sodomy Consultant of Paris | French Historical Studies | Duke University Press
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
8️⃣ (p.s. I’m on the job market this year as my postdoc at Yale ends this spring—open to new opportunities! 🙏📬)
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
7️⃣ What became of Théru's school? The Collège Mazarin once shaped French morals through education. Today, the same building houses the Académie française, which does so through language. (Continuity vs. change...)
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
6️⃣ FWIW, I think we see the social history of sexuality differently when attending to elite institutions. When Foucault wrote, “The sex of the schoolboy became... a public problem” over the 18th century, there are strong reasons to think he had such stories—and this particular school—in mind.
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
5️⃣ Above all, I show how Théru's twin endeavors fit together: that vice policing fit the school's moral charter. Such police work was an indirect consequence of absolutist wars of conquest, state building, and a particular intellectual understanding of the nature of gender and sexual difference.
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
4️⃣ In the article, I read those police archives alongside: ✍️ drafts & reports from Sorbonne & Parlement overseers 📒 account books 📕 printed textbooks 🏛️ architectural plans …in French & Latin, to reconstruct neighborhood life in the growing city.
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
3️⃣ It's a strange side hustle for a humanist, no? Because of his police work, I’ve uncovered more correspondence from Théru than pretty much any of his colleagues. 📂 These letters—in police archives, not university ones—offer a rare glimpse into how higher education operated under absolutism.
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
2️⃣ Our man Théru dutifully taught Latin & Christian morality to his teenage students. But he also... maintained a vast clandestine urban information network and worked covertly with vice police to track, arrest, imprison, or banish alleged “sodomites” across Paris—for nearly 50 years. 🌈🕵️‍♂️⚖️
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
1️⃣ The article traces the strange career of Nicolas Théru, a professor (or regent) at the Collège Mazarin, a school which opened in 1688 to instill French mores in elite youth from provinces newly annexed by Louis XIV's wars of conquest. 🇫🇷📚
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
🚨 New article! I'm excited to share “The sodomy consultant of Paris, 1688–1737,” published this week in French Historical Studies: read.dukeupress.edu/french-histo... . A 🧵:
read.dukeupress.edu
The Sodomy Consultant of Paris | French Historical Studies | Duke University Press
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Tom Hamilton @tombhamilton.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Enjoyed reviewing this interesting and important book on the Wars of Religion by Thierry Amalou, *La Sorbonne entre en guerre de religion: autorité universitaire, censure et pouvoir royal en France (v. 1551–v. 1589)* academic.oup.com/fh/article-a...
academic.oup.com
La Sorbonne entre en guerre de religion: autorité universitaire, censure et pouvoir royal en France (v. 1551–v. 1589)
‘It is the Sorbonne on which the entire school of theology depends, where the most prominent members of the faculty are sourced, where all cases concerning
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Academic gossip!
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Sam Rutherford (he/him) @echomikeromeo.bsky.social · 13/09/2024
FYI, here's what I ultimately came up with: samuelrutherford.com/wp-content/u... Thanks to everyone who shared their own resources!
samuelrutherford.com
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Thomas Wystrach @wystrach.de · 21/11/2023
Buchtipp: Ulrich L. Lehner, »Inszenierte Keuschheit. Sexualdelikte in der Gesellschaft Jesu im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert« (Open Access)
degruyter.com
Inszenierte Keuschheit
This study investigates sexual offenses that were committed in the early modern Jesuit order against school pupils, students, confessants, and other Jesuits. It reveals patterns of sexual violence tha...
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 28/11/2023
Thanks for sharing! I hope it can be useful to book historians & librarians.
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Suzanne Karr Schmidt @drkarrschmidt.bsky.social · 28/11/2023
Incunable-Stravaganza?! In case, (like me), you missed both the early printing shows at the #BnF (2023) and Princeton Libraries (2018), here's a handy dual(ish) review... europenowjournal.org/2023/11/20/i...
Illuminated bordered Gutenberg Bible leaf on parchment from the BnF
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
Thanks! I didn't know there were hashtags here!
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Ben Bernard @drbernard.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
First bsky post! Here to share my co-written review essay, out today in EuropeNow, about the BnF's exhibition on Gutenberg this past summer: www.europenowjournal.org/2023/11/20/i... Where are book history / rare books / cultural exhibitions people on here?
europenowjournal.org
Impressions from France: A Review of the Exhibit "Imprimer! L’Europe de Gutenberg, 1450–1520" at...
Bibliophiles exist on a spectrum, and scholars who study books tend towards one of two
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