Following on my work on the history of women in the 18^th century, I have been studying theoretical gender issues and in particular the relationship between the public and private spheres at the time. Looking at the sociability of salonnières in France and Venice, I realized that this public/private distinction was difficult to maintain in reality.

My current research looks at Venetian salonnières (like Giustina Renier Michiel and Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi) and the men who attended their salons (like Ugo Foscolo, Ippolito Pindemonte and Melchiorre Cesarotti), in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

In particular, I have found that these salonnières drew on the roles they played in literary salons to offer themselves as cultural intermediaries in their publications, by simplifying the erudite writings of men of letters in their circle and making them accessible to a wider readership. I am also a member of the Interacting with Print research group.

Publications principales

Engendering the Republic of Letters: Reconnecting Public and Private Spheres in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Montréal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.
« Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi as Cultural Mediator: Gender and Writing on Art in Early Nineteenth-Century Venice ».  Women’s History Review, 23, 2 (2014): 204-219.
« Women's History of the Risorgimento : A Historiographic Review ». Dans E. Brambilla et Anne Jacobson Schutte, dirs. La storia di genere in Italia in età moderna. Un confronto tra storiche nordamericane e italiane, Rome, Viella, 2014, 159-180.
« Women, Politics and Culture at the end of the Republic of Venice ». Dans Paula Findlen, Catherine Samà et Wendy Wassyng, dir., Italy’s Eighteenth Century: Gender and Power in the Age of the Grand Tour, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2009, 79-100.
« Searching for Virtue: Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi’s Ritratti ». Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40, 1 (automne 2006), 85-108.
« Gender and the Shifting Ground of Revolutionary Politics: The Case of Madame Roland ». Annales canadiennes d’histoire, 36 (août 2001), 259-282.