I am a historian of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe who has concentrated primarily on the interaction of culture, politics, and consumption. My first book, The Invention of the Restaurant, won two major prizes and has been translated into Japanese and Portuguese. Asking a deceptively naïve-seeming question—How did "eating out" become an enjoyable leisure activity?—the book used political pamphlets and medical treatises, travelers' descriptions and legal documents to explore restaurants as a new form of semi-private sociability (and semi-public sensitivity) in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Paris.
My research seems to cluster around basic nouns: having considered "food," I am now interested in "money." My current book project (working title: "Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution") treats the economic and psychic life of symbols—especially that mass-produced symbol known as money. Economic theory and policy are relevant to this study, but I am more especially interested in how money is literally made and used.
Deeply committed to archival research, I nonetheless find it crucial to maintain an active interest in cultural and critical theory. The mutual illumination of 'theory' and 'practice' often informs my teaching, as well, at both undergraduate and graduate level.
I am a member of the History Workshop Journal Editorial Collective and of the Editorial Boards of Food, Culture, and Society and French Historical Studies.
Courtesy of Indiana University - Bloomington.