DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  Modern European History: France and Global Francophonie; Latin American and Caribbean History; Medieval and Early Modern European History

Thematic Field(s):  Colonial, Imperial, & Diasporic History; Gender and Sexuality History; African Diaspora and African American History

Principal Research Interest(s):  Race and Gender in the Francophone Atlantic World

Biography

Rachel Sarcevic-Tesanovic is a historian of early modern and modern Europe, the Atlantic world, and the Caribbean. Her work focuses on how race, gender, and kinship shaped the dynamics of empire and diaspora in the Francophone Atlantic and circum-Caribbean world. Her dissertation, “Intimate Economies: Free Women of African Descent and Making the Francophone Atlantic World, 1750-1850,” examines how free women of color over the long eighteenth century translated their intimate ties into social and economic transformations in their lives and the societies in which they lived. She also has a forthcoming publication in French Colonial History titled “In Return for Good and Essential Services: Ménagère Arrangements, Extralegal Intimacies, and Free Women of Color’s Advancement Strategies in Saint-Domingue.” Her work has been generously supported by, among others, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, the Western Society for French History, the Coordinating Council for Women in History, and the American Historical Association.