Peter Sahlins
Professor
Contact
Office: 3214 Dwinelle
Hours: TUTH 2-3
Phone: (510) 642-1115
Email: sahlins@berkeley.edu
Education
Ph.D. in History, Princeton University (1986)
B.A. Magna Cum Laude with Highest Honors in Social Studies, Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard College (1980)
Academic Appointments
Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley (1997-)
Associate Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley (1992-1997)
Assistant Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley (1989-1992)
Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1999)
Visiting Professor, Economics Faculty, Maastricht University (1996-2002)
Assistant Professor of History, Yale University (1988-1989)
Lecturer in History, Columbia University (1987-1988)
Visiting Lecturer, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris (summer 1987)
Research Assistant, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1986-1987)
Instructor in History, Harvard University (1985-1986)
Professional Experience
Director of Academic Programs, Social Science Research Council, New York (2006-8). Responsibilities include: senior management of research programs; director of major fellowships program for graduate study (IDRF, DPDF); programming and fundraising initiatives on Europe; the environment; publications/communications; and international collaboration.
Director, University of California in Paris (2002-5). Responsible for design, implementation, and management of the UC Center and its academic programs. Responsibilities include, academic programming, staff and faculty supervision, academic oversight and advising of 200 students/year, IT and site installation and management, external relations (with Paris universities and French government), chairing oversight committee of UC Academic Senate.
Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund (1994-2002). Responsible for fundraising, implementing and managing a $4 million endowment for bi-national, collaborative research. Responsibilities include coordination with French foreign ministry and senior management at UC Berkeley; staff supervision; organizing annual fellowship competition and board meetings, fund-raising,
Co-Director, ACLS Collaborative Research Network (1998-2004). Responsible for formulation and coordination of a multi-national research project on "Identifications." Responsibilities include harmonization of research teams in France, China, and Russia; organizing and running network meetings and providing intellectual direction and assistance (in coordination with ACLS).
Vice-Chair, Department of History, UC Berkeley (2000-2002). Responsible for management of the undergraduate curriculum. Responsibilities include coordination of staff, faculty, and students, programming and staffing, reform of curriculm, and oversight of undergraduate history majors (200/year).
Other Administrative Experience: Chair, Executive Committee, Institute for European Studies, UC Berkeley (2000-2); Advisory Committee, Center for Western European Studies, UC Berkeley (1994-1998); Steering Committee, Council for European Studies, Columbia University (1994-1997); Director, French Cultural Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley (1990-1994); Director, Iberian Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley (1992-1994); Executive Committee, Gaspar de Portola Catalan Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley (1990-1996); Departmental and University Committees (1989-present), including search, tenure, promotion, and campus review committees.
Academic Honors, Fellowships, and Grants
University of California President's Research Fellowship (1999-2000)
National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship for University Teachers (1999-2000)
University of California Humanities Research Fellowship (1999-2000)
Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres conferred by the French Republic (1996)
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1994-1995)
University of California President's Research Fellowship (1994-1995).
National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship for University Teachers (1991-1992)
Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, Mellon Fellow (1987-1988)
National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend (1987)
Full Academic Fellowship, Rollins Fellowship, Princeton University (1980-1984)
Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant, Social Science Research Council (1982-1984)
Alexis de Tocqueville Research Fellowship, French American Foundation (1982-1984)
André Istel Research Fellowship, Alliance Française de New York (1982-1983)
Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard College (1980)
Scholarship
Mobility in French History, ed. with Carla Hesse, special issue of French Historical Studies, vol. 29, no. 3 (2006)
Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime and After (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).
Et si on faisait payer les étrangers? Louis XIV, les immigrés, et quelques autres (Paris: Editions Flammarion, 1999) (co-authored with Jean-François Dubost).
Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; paperback edition, 1991; Catalan translation, 1993; French translation, 1996).
"Citizenship and the Droit d'Aubaine in France: A Response to S. Cerutti," in Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales [forthcoming, March 2008].
"Subjecthood That Happens to be Called 'Citizenship,' Or Trying to Make Sense of the Old Regime On Its Own Terms," Interview in Ab Imperio 4/2006: 39-58.
"The Eighteenth-Century Revolution in Citizenship" in Migration Controls in the North Atlantic World: the Evolution of State Practices in Europe and the United States from the French Revolution to the Interwar Period, ed. A. Fahrmeir, O. Faron, and P. Weil (New York and Oxford: Berghan Books, 2002): 11-24.
"Between Bodin and Rousseau: Citizenship and Law in Early Modern France," Pedralbes 20 (2002) : 37-61 [in Catalan]
"Nationalité avant la lettre: les pratiques de la naturalization sous l'Ancien Régime" Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, vol. 55, no. 5 (2000) : 1081-1108 [in French].
« Rethinking Boundaries, » in A. Grimson, ed., Fronteras, naciones e identidades. La periferia como centro (Buenos Aires, 2000) : 41-9 [in Spanish].
"Centering the Periphery: The Cerdanya Between France and Spain," in Center and Periphery: Essays in Honor of John H. Elliott, ed. R. Kagan and G. Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 227-242.
"Fictions of a Catholic France: the Naturalization of Foreigners in Ancien Régime France," Representations, no. 47 (1994): 85-110.
"Deep Play in the Forest: Peasant Culture and Protest in Nineteenth-Century France," in B. Diefendorf and C. Hesse, eds., Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Cultural History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press): 159-177.
"Natural Frontiers Revisited: France's Boundaries Since the Seventeenth Century," American Historical Review 95 (1990): 1423-1451.
"The Use and Abuse of the Nation: the French Cerdagne during the 18th and 19th centuries," in J. Llobera, ed., Family Class, and Nation in Catalonia, special issue of Critique of Anthropology 10 (1990): 73-96.
"Language, Identity, and the French Revolution: A View from the Periphery," Qui Parle 3 (1989): 37-167.
"The Nation in the Village: State Building and Communal Struggles in the Catalan Borderland during the 18th and 19th centuries," Journal of Modern History 60 (1988): 234 63; reprinted with minor revisions in Border Cultures: Nation and State at International Boundaries, ed. T. Wilson and H. Donnan (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
"On the Boundaries of Identity," in M. Grau and O. Poisson, Etudes Roussillonnaises (Perpignan, 1987): 415 52 (in French).
"Half France, Half Spain: Social Change in the Cerdanya," Société Agricole Scientifique et litéraire des Pyrénées Orientales (Perpignan, 1986), pp. 151 170 (in Catalan).
"How Many Histories of the Catalan Frontier?" L'Avenç (Barcelona), no. 86 (November,1985): 42 48 (in Catalan).
"The Fabulous History of Llívia," Cinque Quaderns Municipal de Llívia (1985), pp. 21 27 (in Catalan).
"Nationality, Residence, and the Capitation Tax in the 18th century French Cerdanya," in Actes del Primer Congrés d'Història Moderna de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1984), I: 416 25.
25 book reviews on the history of nations, nationalism, environment, historical ethnography, historical methods, early modern France, Spain, peasant studies, and the French Revolution for The Journal of Modern History, American Historical Review, Journal of Social History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, American Journal of Sociology, Canadian Journal of History, Canadian Journal of History, International History Review, Journal of Ritual Studies, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Selected Conference Papers and Public Lectures
"Models of Exclusion and Belonging in the New Europe," SSRC workshop, St. Louis, September 2007
"The Politics of International Collaboration in the Social Sciences," ESSE network meeting, Liége, Belgium, May 2007.
"Fictions of a Secular France," comment on John Bowen's, Why the French Don't Like Headscarves, Institute for French Studies, NYU, February 2007
"Nationality and Naturalization from Louis XIV to Napoleon," French Historical Studies, Paris, June 2004.
"The Making and Unmaking of the Absolute Citizen," conference on the History of Nationality in France Since the Thirteenth Century, CNRS rue Mahler (University of Paris I), March 2004
"Comparative Identifications: Russia, China, France," ACLS workshop, Yale University, October 2003.
"Animals on Trial," USC Program in Paris, March 2003.
"Why Identities Stick," ACLS workshop, New York, February 2003
"Citizenship in the Early Modern World," Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, January 2003.
"Reading a Letter: Administrative and Juridical Fictions of Naturalization," Early Modern Study Group Workshop, November 2001.
"Official and Vernacular Identifications in the Making of the Modern World," ACLS workshops, Moscow, June 2001; Urumqi (China), August 2001, Fort-de-France (Martinique), December 2001.
"Fictions of Citizenship in 17th century France," Conference on "Literature and the Law in Early Modern France," UC Berkeley, February 2001.
"Why Not Tax Foreigners? A Seventeenth-Century Mistake," workshop organized by the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Immigration Studies Group, May 2000.
"Between Bodin and Rousseau: Citizenship and the Law in Early Modern France," the Autonomous University of Barcelona, March 2000.
"Nationality avant la lettre," paper presented at a workshop organized by the University of Paris-I, C.N.R.S. rue Malher, November 1999.
"The Eighteenth-Century Revolution of Citizenship," Conference on Migration Controls in 19th century France and America, IEP Paris, June 1999
"Boundaries Revisited," Conference on Frontiers, Nations, and Identities, Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social, Buenos Aires, May 1999.
"The Future of European Studies," European Studies at the Millenium, University of California, Berkeley, April 1999.
"Genealogies of Identifications," ACLS Workshop, New York, February 1998.
"Taxing Foreigners in Seventeenth-Century France," European History Colloquium, UC Berkeley, November 1997.
"Folk Models and Models of Folk: Thinking About Identity in the Social Sciences," ACLS Workshop, New York, September 1997.
"'To Have One's Cake and Eat it Too': Micro and Macro-histories in the Borderland," Conference paper, UCLA Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Studies, June 1997.
"Foreigners and the Making of French Citizens," All UC History Conference, Newport Beach, Ca., May 1997.
"Regeneration in Pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary France," Organizer and Chair, Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of California, Berkeley, February 1997.
"The Narcissim of Minor Differences, Again." University of California, Berkeley, Townsend Center for the Humanities, February 1997.
"Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France," University of Chicago, History Department, February 1997.
"The Ancien Regime and the Origins of Modern Citizenship in France," New York University, Institute for French Studies, January 1997
"Approaches to the Study of Immigration in Early Modern Europe," University of California, Davis, Conference on "Im/migration," October 1996
"Foreigners into Frenchmen: Models of Citizenship in Old Regime France," University of California, Davis, May 1996 and Stanford University, 1996
"Resource Deprivation and Transvestism: the Case of the Demoiselles," University of California Berkeley, Mellon Colloquium on Moral Economy, October 1995
"Folk Models of Nationality: Letters of Naturalization in France, 1660-1789," Ecole Normale Superieure, April 1995.
"Religious Difference," Colloquium on "Writing the History of Difference in France," Stanford University, November 1993.
"Religion and the Practices of Royal Citizenship in Ancien Régime France," Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, October 1993; Bay Area Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, November 1993; Chinese University of Hong Kong, May 1994).
"The Politics of Charivari and Vice-Versa," French Department, University of California, Berkeley, April 1993.
"Nations, National Identity, Nationalism," University of California Berkeley, September 1992.
"Nationalism without Nations and Vice-Versa," Conference on "Boundaries and Identities in Europe Since 1789," Oxford University, June 1992.
"Nations and Identities in Early Modern Europe," Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, March 1992.
"Deep Play in the Forest: Peasant Culture and Protest in Nineteenth Century France," Yale University, Center for Agrarian Studies, January 1992.
"The Use and Abuse of the Nation," Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, November 1991.
"State, Nation, Boundary: the View from the Pyrenees," Charles University, Prague, October 1991.
"Mapping Spain: Folk Cartography of the Eighteenth Century," University of California Davis, April 1991.
"Redefining the Political: Peasant Culture, Bourgeois Politics, and the French Revolution of 1830," French Historical Studies Conference, Vancouver, B.C., March 1991.
"The Politics of French Culture," French Historical Studies Conference, Vancouver, B.C., March 1991.
"Deep Play in the Forest: Peasant Culture and Protest in Nineteenth-Century France," Cultural History Symposium, Boston University, November 1990.
"French Catalonia Since 1659," Catalan Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley, March 1990.
"Between France and Spain: Boundaries and Identities in the Pyrenees" University of California, Santa Cruz, February 1990.
"Whose Nation? The Use and Abuse of National Identity on the Periphery," Western Society For French History, New Orleans, October, 1989.
"Natural Frontiers Revisited: France's Boundaries Since the Seventeenth Century," Society for Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, February 1989.
"Nations and Nationalism in France and Spain: A View from the Periphery," Colloquium on Nations and Nationalism, Princeton University, November 1988.
"Of Circles and Segments: Models of Identity in European Social Science," Society for Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, April 1988.
"The Use and Abuse of the Nation," Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, March 1987.
"National Identity and Nationalism in Catalonia during the Nineteenth Century," The Center for European Studies, Harvard University, February 1987.
"Immigration and Identity in the French-Spanish Borderland," Cambridge Early Modern Group, Harvard University, February 1986.
"The Nation in the Village: Communal Disputes and National Identities in the Catalan Borderland during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," American Historical Association, New York, December 1985.
University Teaching Experience
Undergraduate lecture courses and seminars: The Craft of History; The French Revolution; Histories of Europe, 1492-1992; Nations and Nationalisms in Europe, 1750-1945; Old Regime and Revolutionary Europe, 1648-1815; State and Society in Early Modern France; Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe; Peasant Society in Early Modern Europe; Old Regime and Revolutionary France; Eighteenth Century Europe, 1715 1815; Peasants and the State in France since 1700; Historical Anthropology; Directed Studies (Yale) and Contemporary Civilization (Columbia): Classical Greece to the Present.
Graduate seminars: Immigrants and Aliens in Early Modern Europe; Religion and Empire in the Hispanic World; The Peasantry in Early Modern France and Germany; The Craft of History Since Herodotus; Law and Society in Early Modern France; Old Regime and Revolutionary Europe; Legitimacy and Subversion in Medieval and Early Modern France; The "National Question" in Early Modern Europe; Early Modern Spain; Old Regime and Revolutionary France; Introduction to Historical Methods; The Historiography of Early Modern Europe; Nations and Nationalism in the Early Modern and Modern Worlds.
Other Professional Service
Board Memberships: Institut d'Etudes Avancées (Lyon, France); Prickly Paradigm Press (2002-); French Historical Studies (1997-2000).
External Referee: UC President's Research Fellowships; Kaplan Humanities Center, Northwestern University; German Marshall Fund Fellowship; NEH University Fellowships; the French-American Foundation (Bicentennial Fellowship Committee); Chateaubriand Fellowship Committee (French Government); Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; University of California Press; W.W. Norton Publishing Company; Canadian Journal of History; Zone Books; Cornell University Press; French Historical Studies; Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
External Reviews for Tenure and Promotion: Georgia Tech, University of Virginia, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University
Editorial Consultant: The Bicycle (Paris: Editions Flammarion, 1997); The Libertine Reader (New York: Zone Books, 1999); The Wicked Queen (New York: Zone Books, 1999); Culture in Practice (New York: Zone Books, 2001).
Languages
French: fluent speaking, reading, and writing;
Spanish: competent speaking, reading, and writing;
Catalan: competent reading and speaking