Mary Wollstonecraft: An English Woman Observing and Writing the History of the French Revolution

Abstract

The general public is more familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter Mary Shelley, who imagined Frankenstein as a monstrous metaphor of modernity. Historians are also aware that Mary Wollstonecraft died giving birth to Mary Shelley.
However, among scholars, the two texts of Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Men as a response to Edmund Burke and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, are of foremost importance. In this lecture, Prof. Serna will introduce another less-known and long-depreciated text titled An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution; and the Effect it Has Produced in Europe. He intends to show that it is one of the first great histories of the French Revolution, proposing a new narrative and a new historiographic epistemology.
 

Program

Lecture Prof. Pierre SERNA (Visiting Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo; Professor Paris 1 University)
Comment Prof. Jennifer ROBERTSON (Visiting Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo; Professor Emerita, University of Michigan)
Moderator Prof. HANEDA Masashi (Director, Tokyo College)