Katherine Dauge-Roth

Affiliation: Romance Languages and Literatures, Francophone Studies

Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures

Katherine Dauge-Roth’s scholarly interests span the literature, history and culture of the early modern Francophone world, with a focus on the history of the body and material culture. She is the author of Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France (Routledge, 2020), which examines the marked body in Europe and the Americas from the late sixteenth through early eighteenth centuries and includes work on Native American and pilgrimage tattooing, criminal branding, devotional stigmata, and the devil’s mark on witches. She co-edited, with historian Craig Koslofsky, a collective volume on Stigma: Marking Skin in the Early Modern World (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023), whose chapters bring together scholars from multiple disciplines to examine body marking from a global perspective. Katherine has also published articles on demonology, textual amulets, graffiti, maternal imagination, women and the moon, criminal branding, popular healing, forensic medicine, and teaching the early modern.

Professor Dauge-Roth is currently engaged in several article projects on race thinking in the early 17^th century, one of which was supported in summer 2023 by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a member of the Early Modern Race reading group and the Skin Studies reading group. She serves as the Executive Director of the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies and as President of Bowdoin’s Alpha of Maine chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Professor Dauge-Roth loves teaching across the Francophone Studies curriculum, from elementary language courses through upper-level seminars. She enjoys sharing her research interests with her students in seminars on the history of the body, race and gender, representing the occult, and the fait divers in journalism, literature, and film. She regularly teaches the section’s innovative “Spoken Word and Written Text” course, which examines oral as well as written sources from the Middle Ages through the abolition of enslavement in 1848 to tell a more complete story of what will become the Francophone world. In “Contemporary France through the Media,” her students hone their cultural analysis and argumentative skills, navigating the politics and pressing social issues facing France today though dynamic multi-media units.

Katherine Dauge-Roth is deeply committed to inclusive pedagogy and to the development of her students’ linguistic and cultural fluency, critical analysis, presentation, and writing skills across the curriculum. She won the Karofsky Teaching Prize in 2005 and has authored and co-authored with Charlotte Daniels several articles on teaching the early modern period and contemporary France.

Books

Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France (New York: Routledge 2020).

Signing the Body examines the representation of the body as a literally written or imprinted surface in early modern France. The book explores how the body served in the late 16^th through early 18^th centuries as a privileged surface for displaying authority and identity in a time of increased circulation of people and goods. Five chapters highlight intersections between marks inscribed or impressed on skin, writing and print culture, and commercial marking practices, examining: the invention of the “devil’s mark” on witches; the use of textual and figurative stigmata by women religious; French accounts of Native American tattooing and the adoption of the practice by European inhabitants of North America; the use of tattooing by European pilgrims who journeyed to Jerusalem and Bethlehem; and the rise of criminal branding by the state.

Listen: New Books in French Studies interview about Signing the Body

Stigma: Marking Skin in the Early Modern World, co-edited with historian Craig Koslofsky (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023).

The early modern period (c. 1450-1800) opened a new era in the history of dermal marking. Intensifying global travel and trade, especially, the slave trade, brought diverse skin-marking practices into contact as never before. Stigma examines the distinctive skin cultures and marking methods of Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas as they began to circulate and reshape one another in the early modern world. This interdisciplinary volume investigates how early modern people used permanent marks on skin to affirm traditional roles and believes, and how they hybridized and transformed skin marking to meet new economic and political demands.

Articles and Book Chapters

“Un corps ‘sans histoire’: Imagination maternelle, marques cutanées et corrections médicales à l’époque moderne.” In Textes et corps sous le scalpel. Pratiques de la mutilation en France (1500-1800), edited by Sofina Dembruk, Daniele Maira, and Ioana Manea. Biblio-17. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Forthcoming.

“Bodies of Evidence: Judges and Surgeons at the Crime Scene in Early Modern France.” Physiognomy and Visual Judgment in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Manuela Bragagnolo and John Jeffries Martin, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 54.1 (2024): 137-163.

“Marking Skin: A Cutaneous Collection.” Introduction co-authored with Craig Koslofsky. In Stigma: Marking Skin in the Early Modern World, edited by Katherine Dauge-Roth and Craig Koslofsky. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023. 1–15.

“Rabies and Relics: Cutaneous Marks and Popular Healing in Early Modern Europe.” In Stigma: Marking Skin in the Early Modern World, edited by Katherine Dauge-Roth and Craig Koslofsky. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023. 163–195.

“Learning to Listen: A New Approach to Teaching Early Modern Encounters in the Americas.” Co-authored with Charlotte Daniels. In Teaching Race in the European Renaissance, edited by Matthieu Chapman and Anna Wainwright. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2023. 321–348.

Read: Interview with Teaching Race in the Renaissance Editors

“Honoring Native American Voices in the Francophone Studies Classroom: Restoring Oral Testimonies to Their Rightful Place in the Story of the Early Modern Americas.” Co-authored with Charlotte Daniels. In Diversity and Decolonization in French Studies, edited by Loïc Bourdeau and Siham Bouamer. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 93–114.

“Globalizing the Early Literature Survey: Challenges and Rewards.” Co-authored with Charlotte Daniels. French Review 93.1 (October 2019): 92-107 with accompanying on-line pedagogical dossier.

“Prêt à porter: Textual Amulets, Popular Belief and Defining Superstition in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century France.” Special issue on Wearing Images, edited by Diane Brodart, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma 6 (2018): 84-114.

“Teaching the Impossible Subject of Charlie Hebdo.” Co-authored with Charlotte Daniels. Contemporary French Civilization 41.2 (July 2016): 301-318.

“Shooting the Moon: Women Astronomers in Early Modern France.” Networks, Interconnection, Connectivity. Ed. Ellen Welsh and Michèle Longino. Tübingen: Narr, 2015: 175-187.

"Marquage du corps et modernité: La flétrissure des condamnés aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles en France." Ecritures du Corps/Writing the Body . Eds. William J. Spurlin, Anne Tomiche, and Pierre Zoberman. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013.

"Crossing Lines, Encouraging Ownership: Teaching the Occult Early Modern." Cahiers du Dix-Septième 10.2 (2006).

"Ventriloquism and the Voice of Authority: Nuns, Demons, and Exorcists in Early Seventeenth-Century France." Early Modern Convent Voices: The World and the Cloister. Ed. Thomas M. Carr, Jr. EMF: Studies in Early Modern France 11 (2005).

"Textual Performance: Imprinting the Criminal Body." In Intersections. Eds. Faith Beasley and Kathryn Wine. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2005.

"Femmes lunatiques: Women and the Moon in Early Modern France." Dalhousie French Studies 71 (2005).

"Médiations, figures et expériences de l'autre vie: Jean-Joseph Surin à la rencontre du démoniaque." In L'autre au dix-septième siècle. Eds. Ralph Heyndels and Barbara Woshinsky. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1999. 375-84.

Public-Facing Scholarship

“The Early Modern Tattoo.” Guest blog entry for Pennsylvania State University Press, August 16, 2023.

“The Pilgrim Tattoo.” Invited blog entry for Renaissance Skin website, April 24, 2020.

Reviews and Review Essay

Review Essay, Noémie Ndiaye, Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. Co-authored with Rose A. Pruiskma. H-France Forum, Volume 18 (2023), Issue 5.

Review of Domna C. Stanton, The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France: Women Writ, Women Writing. Farnam/Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10.2 (Spring 2016): 204-207.

Review of Cathy McClive, Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France. Farnam/Burlington: Ashgate, 2015. Renaissance Quarterly 69.4 (Winter 2016): 1482-84.

Review of Charles Zika, Exorcising our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003. The Sixteenth Century Journal 36.1 (Spring 2005): 178-80.

Review of Darryll Grantley and Nina Taunton, The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. The Sixteenth Century Journal 34.2 (Summer 2003): 468-70.

Review of Claire Richter Sherman, Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. The Sixteenth Century Journal 34.1 (Spring 2003): 284-86.

Review of George Modestin, Le Diable chez l’évêque. Chasse aux sorciers dans le diocèse de Lausanne (vers 1460). Lausanne: Cahiers Lausannois d’Histoire Médiévale 25 (1999). The Sixteenth Century Journal 32.2 (Summer 2001): 591-93.

Review of Laurinda S. Dixon, Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 51 (October 1996): 508-10.

Review of Martine Ostorero, Folâtrer avec les démons: Sabbat et chasse aux sorcières à Vevey (1448). Lausanne: Cahiers Lausannois d’Histoire Médiévale 15 (1995). Travers 3 (1996): 168-69.

Exhibition

"Witches, Monsters, and Demons: Representing the Occult." Exhibit in the John A. and Helen P. Becker Gallery, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, September 30-November 2, 2003, created in conjunction with French 325 students.

Image: CHARLES MERYON, The Vampire (Le Styrge) from the collection of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Website

“La Dépanneuse.” Online resource in French of points of vocabulary, grammar, and style that pose particular challenges for non-native students of French. Built in collaboration with Kylie Best ’19, July 2018.

“Skin Tactics: Epidermal Imposture in Early Modern France,” 42^nd Annual Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Seventeenth-Century French Studies, Rochester, NY, October 19-21, 2023.

“Indigenous Skin: Reading Native American Skin Color in Seventeenth-Century France,” Cultures of Skin: Skin in Literature and Culture, Past, Present, Future, University of Surrey, UK, July 7-8, 2023.

“A ‘Fifth Race?’: The Question of Native American Skin Color in the Definition of Difference,” Renaissance Society of America, San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 9-11, 2023.

Roundtable Participant, Co-Organizer, and Co-Chair with Craig Koslofsky, “Marking Skin in the Early Modern World: New Approaches,” Renaissance Society of America, San Juan, Puerto Rico, March 9-11, 2023.

Invited guest lecture, “Maternal Imagination, Skin Color, and Colonial Anxieties in Early Modern France and the French Antilles,” City University of New York Graduate Center, November 11, 2022.

Invited participant, online conference and workshop on Physiognomy and Visual Judgment in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, organized by Manuela Bragagnolo and John Jeffries Martin, October 29, 2022.

Invited presentation, international colloquium on “Textes et corps sous le scalpel. Pratiques de la mutilation en France (1500-1800),” Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany, June 9-11, 2022.

Invited presentation, “Defining Blackness: Early Debates about Skin Color at Théophraste Renaudot’s Bureau d’adresse et de rencontre,” concluding conference to celebrate Renaissance Skin, funded by a grant from the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, primary investigator historian Evelyn Welch, King’s College London, June 8-9, 2022.

“Black Women Making White Babies, White Women Making Black Babies: Maternal Imagination, Skin Color, and Inter-Racial Sexuality in the French Antilles,” 40th Annual Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Seventeenth-Century French Studies, Virtual Conference, October 14-15 and 22-23, 2021.

Presentation of the “Early Modern Race Theory” project and workshop leader with Drs. Valentine Balguerie, Valentina Denzel, Domna C. Stanton, Ashley Williard, and Daniel Worden, 40th Annual Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Seventeenth-Century French Studies, Virtual Conference, October 14-15 and 22-23, 2021.

Invited presentation, “Essentializing Difference through Skin Color in Early Seventeenth-Century France,” Online conference on “Approaches to Skin in Literature and Culture,” organized by Charlotte Mathieson and Nicole Nyffeneggar, June 10-11, 2021.

“Defining Blackness: Difference, Skin Color, and Enslavement in the Early Seventeenth Century,” North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, University of Iowa, Iowa City (Online), May 28-29, 2021.

Invited session respondent, “Marking Difference: Tattooed Bodies in Cross- Cultural Contexts,” Renaissance Society of America (Online), April 13-15 and April 20-22, 2021.

“Maternal Marks: Women’s Desire and Imprinting Fetal Skin” as part of a session co-organized on “Gendered Impressions: Early Modern Women and Marks on Skin,” Renaissance Society of America (Online), April 13-15 and April 20-22, 2021.

Invited to present concluding roundtable remarks with Craig Koslofsky for the invited colloquium on “Tattooed Bodies in Early Modern Worlds,” organized by Sebestian Kroupa of the Renaissance Skin Project, King’s College, London (Online), March 30-31, 2021.

“Globalizing the Early Survey,” with co-presenter Charlotte Daniels, 1st Annual (Online) Conference on Diversity, Decolonization, and the French Curriculum, November 13-14, 2020.

“Early Debates about Skin Color at Théophraste Renaudot’s Bureau d’adresse et de rencontre,” The Society of Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies 38th Annual Conference, Online, October 22-23 and November 6-7, 2020.

Invited presentation through Zoom conference of Signing the Body: Marks on Skin in Early Modern France, organized by the Renaissance Skin Project, funded by a grant from the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, King’s College, London, primary investigator historian Evelyn Welch, May 1, 2020.

“Globalizing the Early Survey: Dilemmas, Challenges, Rewards,” The Society of Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies 37^th Annual Conference, December 17-19, 2018.

“Material Memory: Pilgrim Tattoos, Skin, and Identity,” Renaissance Society of America, New Orleans, LA, March 22-25, 2018.

“Skin, Paper, and Parchment: Healing Words in Early Modern Europe,” invited colloquium on “The Legible Body: Skin, Paper and Parchment in Early Modern Europe,” King’s College, London, November 29, 2017 preceding the “Porous Bodies” Conference, King’s College, London, November 30-December 1, 2017.

“A Science of Specters: Demonology’s Ghosts,” The Society of Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies 36^th Annual Conference, Oakland and Palo Alto, CA, November 2-4, 2017.

“Physical Graffiti: Engraving Bark, Stone, and Skin in the Pastorale,” The Society of Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies 35^th Annual Conference, Hanover, NH, November 10-13, 2016.

“Material Memory: Holy Land Pilgrimage as Embodied Experience,” Sixteenth-Century Society Conference, Bruges, Belgium, August 18-20, 2016.

“Entertaining Ideas: Scientific Spectacle and the Transmission of Knowledge,” North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Winter Park and Orlando, FL, June 1-3, 2016.

“The Ephemerides of Love: Cosmographical Satire of Gender Relations in Seventeenth-Century France,” 62^nd Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Boston, March 31-April 2, 2016. Presentation as part of a session I organized on “Between Science and Fiction: Cosmology and Society in the Grand Siècle.”

“Cutaneous Marks and Popular Healing in Early Modern Europe,” American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University, March 17-20, 2016. Presentation as part of an interdisciplinary seminar on “Signs, Symptoms, Stigmata: Early Modern Techniques of Inscribing the Body and Their Contemporary Relevance” that I a co-organized and led with Peter Erickson.

“The Well-Traveled Tattoo: Hybrid Identities in New France,” The Society of Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies 34^th Annual Conference, New Brunswick, NJ, November 5-7, 2015.

“Shooting the Moon: Women Astronomers in Seventeenth-Century France,” Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Symposium, “Science Before Science,” Bowdoin College, February 27-28, 2015.

"The Pilgrim's Body: Holy Land Pilgrimage as Embodied Experience," Modern Languages Association, Vancouver, BC, January 8-11, 2015.

“Shooting the Moon: Women Astronomers in Early Modern France,” North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, Durham, NC, May 15-17. 2014.

“Signs of a Cure: Corporeal Marking and Popular Healing in Early Modern Europe,” Popular Culture Association, Chicago, IL, April 16-19, 2014.

“Signes de vie: Marks on Skin and Identity in Early Modern France.” North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature Annual Conference, Nashville, TN, May 25-27, 2012.

“Marks of Identity: Passports and Tattoos for the Cosmopolitan Traveler.” Society for Interdisciplinary Seventeenth-Century Studies 30^th Annual Conference, Lexington, KY, November 3-5, 2011.

“Stigma: Imprinting the Criminal Body in Early Modern France.” Écritures du corps/Writing the Body, International conference organized by the CENEL and the University of Sussex, Université Paris 13, November 18-20, 2010.

“New France Encounters, Old World Practices: Rewriting the Early Modern History of the Tattoo.” Session on “Relating New France in the Seventeenth Century” (presenter and session organizer), Western Society for French History Annual Conference, The University of Laval, Québec, Canada, November 6-9, 2008.

“The Wanderings of the Worn Word.” Society for Interdisciplinary Seventeenth-Century Studies 27^th Annual Conference, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, October 23-23, 2008.

“Plagued by Love: Tales of Infectious Affections.” Session on “Disease and Contagion.” The Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, October 12-14, 2006.

“Prêt à porter: The Rhetoric of the Worn Word.” Session on “Rhetoric and the Body,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, The University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, April 20-22, 2006.

“Shaping the Woods, (In)Forming the City: Pastoral and Urban Graffiti in Seventeenth-Century France.” Session on “Forms and Shapes / Formes Concrètes,” North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature Annual Conference: “Formes et Formations au XVIIe siècle,” University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, April 14-16, 2005.

“Crossing Lines, Encouraging Ownership: Teaching the Occult Early Modern.” Session on “Teaching the Seventeenth Century,” The Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, October 28-30, 2004.

“Textual Performance: Imprinting the Criminal Body.” Session on “Print and Performance,” North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature Annual Conference: “Intersections,” Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, May 8-10, 2003.

“Gendered Impressions: Marking the Body in Early Modern France.” Session on “Gender and Philosophy,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, The University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, April 24-26, 2003.

“Stigma: The Criminal Body as a Site of Memory.” Organized and chaired session on “Inscribing Memory on the Body,” The Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies Annual Conference, Tampa, Florida, November 15-17, 2002.

“Demonic Signatures, Divine Stigmata: The Female Body Inscribed.” Session on “Early Modern Women and Gender,” Western Society for French History Annual Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, October 3-5, 2002.

“Gossip and Gossipers in the Court of Louis the XIVth.” Presentation and post-play discussion leader on Molière’s Misanthrope in Portland Stage Company’s “Scholars on Stage” series, October, 2001.

“Femmes lunatiques: Women and the Moon in Early Modern France.” Session on “Reading Signs: Astrology and Superstition,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, The University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, April 19-21, 2001.

“The Possessed Body, Inside Out: Reading, Writing, and Authority in Cases of Demonic Possession.” Session on “Bodies/Borders: Constructing the Corporeal in the Early Modern,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, The University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, April 27-28, 2000.

“Fleshy Thresholds and Paratextual Prescriptions: Writing the Body in Cases of Demonic Possession.” Session on “Paratexts and Thresholds / Paratextes et seuils,” The Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, Lexington, Kentucky, November 11-13, 1999.

“Writing Violence in Women’s Memoirs of Possession.” Organized and chaired session on “Writing Violence,” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, The University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, April 22-24, 1999.

“Signing the Body: Demonic Wounds and Sacred Scars in Early Modern Possession Narratives.” Session on “Written on the Body,” MLA Convention, San Francisco, California, December 27-30, 1998.

“Medicine at the Margin: Demonic Possession and the Limits of the Natural.” Session on “Science and Frontiers / Science et frontières,” The Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, Orange, California, October 8-10, 1998.

“Médiations, figures et expériences de l’autre vie: Jean-Joseph Surin à la rencontre du démoniaque.” Session on “Religion et mysticisme,” Centre International de Rencontres sur le XVIIème Siècle, “L’Autre au Dix-Septième Siècle,” Miami, Florida, April 23-25, 1998.

“Voices of Authority: Transgression and Truth-Telling in Seventeenth-Century Cases of Demonic Possession.” Session on “Authority and Transgression / L’autorité et la transgression,” The Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies Annual Conference, New Bern, North Carolina, October 16-18, 1997.

“(Un)veiling the Demonic.” Workshop on “Catholicism Reads Veiled Bodies,” The Rhetorics and Rituals of (Un)Veiling in Early Modern Europe Conference, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, October 3-5, 1997.

“Écriture possédée et reprise de possession: Les mémoires de Sœur Jeanne des Anges (1644).” Colloque “Littératures,” Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, France, June 1-2, 1997.

“Bodily Fluids and Gender Fluidity: Writing Excess in Sixteenth-Century Medical Discourse.” The Fifth Annual Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Symposium, The University of Miami, Miami, Florida, February 22-24, 1996.

“Translating Texts, Translating Bodies: The Life of Saint Alexis and the Medieval Cult of Relics.” The Second Annual Forum for Graduate Students of French and Francophone Studies, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 7, 1994.

Education

PhD in French Literature, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, The University of Michigan
MA in French Literature, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, The University of Michigan
DEUG in Lettres Modernes, Université de Caen
AB in French and History, Colby College

Romance Languages and Literatures