Dr Penny Roberts

Contact Information:

Room 316
Telephone: 02476 523411
Email: penny.roberts@warwick.ac.uk

On study leave 2012-13

Academic Profile
  • Lecturer at Warwick since 1992, Senior Lecturer since 2004, Reader from 2009
  • Director of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance 2010-12
  • Co-editor of the Oxford University Press journal French History (2010-)
  • Founding co-editor of the Manchester University Press series 'Studies in early modern European history' (1995-)
  • Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (2000-)
  • Member of the Peer Review College of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2006-2012)
  • Member of the committee of the Society for the Study of French History (1998-) and of the editorial board of its associated journal, French History (2007-)

  • Member of the editorial board of Explorations in Renaissance Culture (2010-)

  • Member of the organising committee of the Cultures of War and Conflict Resolution Research Network (2008-)
Undergraduate Modules Taught
Postgraduate Modules Taught
Publications

Books and edited volumes:

  • Ritual and Violence: Natalie Zemon Davis and Early Modern France, ed. with Graeme Murdock and Andrew Spicer (Past and Present Supplement 7; Oxford U.P., 2012)
  • History at the End of the World? History, Climate Change and the Possibility of Closure, ed. with Mark Levene and Rob Johnson (Humanities-Ebooks, 2010)
  • Political Culture in Early Modern France, guest-edited special volume of French History, 21, 2 (2007)
  • The Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Early Modern France, ed. with Keith Cameron and Mark Greengrass (Peter Lang, 2000)
  • The Massacre in History, ed. with Mark Levene (Berghahn, 1999)
  • Fear in Early Modern Society, ed. with Bill Naphy (Manchester U.P., 1997)
  • A City in Conflict: Troyes during the French Wars of Religion (Manchester U.P., 1996)

Recent articles:

  • 'The Languages of Peace during the French Religious Wars', Cultural and Social History, 4 (2007), 293-311 [awarded the Sixteenth Century Society Nancy Lyman Roelker prize and the Charles DeBenedetti Peace History Prize]
  • 'Urban Conflict and Royal Authority: Popular Revolts in Sixteenth-Century Troyes', Urban History, 34 (2007), 189-207
  • 'The Kingdom's Two Bodies? Corporeal Rhetoric and Royal Authority during the Religious Wars', French History, 21 (2007), 147-64 (plus introduction to this volume, 'Political Culture in Early Modern France', 123-6)

Recent essays:

  • ‘Huguenotes et bigotes. Les femmes et la Réforme vues par Nicolas Pithou’, in F. Salesse (ed.), Le bon historien sait faire parler les silences. Hommages à Thierry Wanegffelen (Toulouse, 2012), 91-102
  • ‘La Parole de la paix en espace civique au temps des guerres de religion’, in Stefano Simiz (ed.), La Parole publique en ville des Réformes à la Révolution (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2012), 167-79
  • 'Peace, Ritual and Sexual Violence', in G. Murdock, P. Roberts and A.Spicer (eds), Ritual and Violence: Natalie Zemon Davis and Early Modern France (Oxford, 2012), 75-99
  • 'La monarchie consultative, mythe ou réalité: Les états généraux et le "père du peuple", 1560-1614' in M. De Waele (ed.), Lendemains de guerre civile: Réconcliations et restaurations sous Henri IV (Québec, 2011), 89-108
  • 'One Town, Two Faiths: Unity and Exclusion during the French Religious Wars', in Thomas Max Safley (ed.), A Companion to Multiconfessionalism in the Early Modern World (Leiden, 2011), 265-85
  • 'The Wrath of God: reactions to crisis and natural disaster in pre-modern Europe', with Elaine Fulton, in M. Levene, R.Johnson and P. Roberts (eds), History at the End of the World? History, Climate Change and the Possibility of Closure (Humanities-Ebooks, 2010), 67-79

Forthcoming books:

  • Peace and Authority during the French Religious Wars, c. 1560-1600 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
  • Deviants and Social Outcasts in Early Modern Europe, with Andrew Spicer (Cambridge UP)

Forthcoming articles/essays:

  • ‘Une chose fort a craindre et bien mal aisée a descouvrir’: the transgression of borders in sixteenth-century France’, for a special issue of Explorations in Renaissance Culture, ‘French Across Borders, 1300-1600’ (2013)
  • 'Riot and Religion in Sixteenth-Century France' in Michael T. Davis (ed.), Disturbing the Peace: Crowd Actions in Britain and France, 1381 to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
  • 'La ruine du peuple et la desolation du royaume au temps des guerres de religion', in M. Barral-Baron, M-C. Lagree and M. Lemoine (eds), 'Deffaite et ruyne de soy': action politique et impasses de la raison (Paris)
  • 'Contested Authority: Peace, Violence and Memory during the French Religious Wars', in R. Pörtner and Andreas Gestrich (eds), Communities in Conflict: Civil Wars and their Legacies (Brill)
Research
  • My principal area of interest is the social, religious, cultural and political history of sixteenth-century France, especially its wars of religion (c.1562-1598). Having begun with a study of the impact of the wars in the town of Troyes, my research has broadened to include the whole of urban France, covering such diverse topics as petitioning, fires, popular revolts, and the conflicts arising over the siting of Reformed worship and burial. My new book focuses on the attempts to establish some kind of 'peace process' during the wars and the impact of this on confessional relations and royal authority. I am now undertaking a study of the clandestine world of Huguenot correspondence, espionage and information-gathering and, eventually, intend to write an exploration of the world of Nostradamus.
  • I am happy to supervise postgraduate students on any aspect of sixteenth-century French history.
PhD Theses Supervised
  • Kevin Gould (Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University) , 'Catholic Associations in south-west France, c. 1560-1570' [PhD, 1999-2003]
  • Cathy McClive (Lecturer, University of Durham) , 'Perceptions of Menstruation in early modern France' [PhD, 1999-2004]
  • James Tucker (Lecturer, University of Plymouth), 'Strangers in Jean Crespin's Histoire des martyrs' [PhD, 2008-12]
  • Linda Briggs, 'The Royal Tour of France, 1564-66' [PhD, 2009-]
  • Matthew Jackson, 'Drinking Cultures in early modern Bristol and Bordeaux' [PhD, 2010-]