We lost one of the truly great historians of the postwar era with the passing of Natalie Zemon Davis at her home in Toronto on October 21. Anyone trained in a history doctoral program since the 1970s knows her work and legions of us have had our research interests inspired by her. Some history undergraduates may, but certainly all should know and closely read her pathbreaking studies in the social, gender, and cultural history of early modern France and Europe. She moved the field, and then some.
The extended obituary in the NYT presents a fine synopsis of Natalie’s amazing life and wide influence. I want briefly to share how I came to know this remarkable woman. It was in fact due to the good graces of another remarkable woman, my mentor at Boston University, Dr. Nancy L. Roelker. The AHA, in fact, named its prestigious Mentoring Award in Nancy’s honor shortly after her death in 1993. The story I will tell will help explain why it did. In 1982, just after I began my doctoral studies, Nancy introduced me to Natalie at an AHA meeting. I remember her talking over lunch about making the movie and writing the book about Martin Guerre. It was during that lunch I learned about how Nancy had been so instrumental in helping to get Natalie started in the profession back in the 1960s. Prior to that, Natalie and her husband, Chandler, a brilliant mathematician, while still graduate students at Michigan in the mid-1950s had been targeted by the House Committee on Un-american Activities for their political activism. Chandler even went to jail for a time. They were blackballed by universities and the FBI confiscated their passports. For Natalie, this also meant no return travel to the archives in France for further, vital research. Though she managed to defend her thesis in 1959, professional prospects for both their futures looked bleak until Chandler landed a job at the University of Toronto in 1962. With that, he and his young family moved north. Natalie began teaching at Toronto part-time and writing. She still encountered much trouble, however, finding a place on conference programs or in getting universities stateside interested in hiring her. This is where Nancy’s role was decisive. Nancy, who helped many other women join the profession, knew of Natalie’s difficulties, so she made it her task, starting in 1964, to make sure Natalie was on the program of every annual meeting of the new Society for French History, which she had just helped to set up, for as long as she wanted. It did not take long, in fact, for others to sit up and take notice of Natalie’s brilliant new work combining social and cultural history, and by 1971 she became the second woman ever on the history faculty at Berkeley. The rest is history, as they say.
After my first encounter with Natalie back in 1982, I’d occasionally see her at meetings. I only had the privilege of working with her in the wake of Nancy’s death a decade later. Soon after, I contacted Natalie about organizing a Festschrift in Nancy’s honor, which she enthusiastically embraced. With her help, we got our collection of essays by colleagues and students of Nancy published a few years later. All Nancy’s good deeds came full circle, we felt. Our work together on that project set the stage for our second collaboration, a translation from French of her extended interview with Denis Crouzet, a distinguished French historian. A Passion for History came out in 2010 and is as close to an autobiography we will ever have of this remarkable historian and woman. Her voice will be missed but her presence will always be felt. Adieu chère mâitresse.
Michael Wolfe, November 2, 2023
