Tuttle wins book award for study of French marital problems

The Hall Center for the Humanities has announced the recipient of the Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Studies Book Publication Award. Leslie Tuttle, assistant professor of history, has won the award for her forthcoming publication with Oxford University Press.

“Conceiving the Old Regime” traces the French monarchy’s growing intervention in the marital and sexual lives of French men and women in the 17th and 18th centuries. Early reviews are glowing, with one press reviewer calling it “by far the most innovative study of Early Modern France that I have read in some time.”

Tuttle’s work reveals how the French state delivered rewards for marriage and prolific reproduction to thousands of fertile households across the kingdom, creating new means for state surveillance of sexuality and family life. This model of conjugal life promoted by the royal government reflected the political ideology of absolutism and the religious values of the Catholic Reformation.

Tuttle received her doctorate from Princeton University in 2000 and joined KU’s faculty in 2003. She specializes in the history of women and gender, feminism, family, sexuality, the history of France and European social and cultural history.

The Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Studies Book Publication Award is sponsored by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies. It is intended to assist in the publication of meritorious book manuscripts resulting from humanities research by KU faculty members.