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A. Whitney Walton
Professor, Department of History
Office: UNIV 323
Office Phone: (765) 494-9435
Office Fax: (765) 496-1755
Email: awhitney@purdue.edu
Specialization:
Professor Walton specializes in the cultural, social, and gender history of modern Europe, especially France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. Her current research interests are transnational and comparative. Her forthcoming book is a history of study abroad between France and the United States from 1890-1970. This research has been supported by a Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant for 2002, a College of Liberal Arts Center for Humanistic Studies Fellowship in 2004, and a Fulbright Research Scholar Award in 2005. She is currently analyzing Jackie Kennedy in the context of Franco-American and international relations.
Publications include:
France at the Crystal Palace: Bourgeois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the Nineteenth Century (University of California Press, 1992) - argues that bourgeois consumer preference for stylish and tasteful goods contributed to the persistence of handicraft manufacturing in France during the Industrial Revolution.
Her most recent book, Eve's Proud Descendants : Four Women Writers and Republican Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford University Press, 2000), is a biographical study and historical analysis of four female literary figures, including George Sand, who rescripted republicanism to include a public role for women by offering an egalitarian alternative to the patriarchal family and the gendered separation of spheres. She has also published numerous articles and book chapters on nineteenth-century French social, cultural, and women's history, and on Franco-American cultural relations in the twentieth century.
Her forthcoming book, Internationalism, National Identities, and Study Abroad: France and the United States, 1890-1970, analyzes how students abroad experience challenges to national stereotypes, re-evaluate their own national identities, and learn toleration and appreciation for cultural difference. In other words, this study explains how young people become internationalists while retaining national identities.