The Department of French and Italian and sponsored by the Mulhauser Fund is pleased to announce the following guest lecture:

"Forbidden to Forbid: The French Sexual Revolution and May '68"

Tamara Chaplin, associate professor of modern European history at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Tamara Chaplin also has faculty affiliations in the Departments of French and Italian, and Gender and Women’s Studies. A scholar of contemporary France,  Prof. Chaplin specializes in modern European cultural and intellectual history, the histories of gender and sexuality, feminist and critical theory, queer studies, human rights, popular culture and the media.

Her first book, Turning On the Mind: French Philosophers on Television (University of Chicago Press, 2007), argues that the history of the televising of philosophy in France is crucial to understanding the struggle over French national identity in the postwar period.

Prof. Chaplin is interested in the influence of mass media and globalization on the construction of national identities, on the links between high and popular culture, and on the relationship between politics, law, the media and the social institution of moral values. 

New articles on the history of sex education and a book-length manuscript on the history of lesbian life in postwar France extend these interests to new domains. 

A former professional ballet dancer, trained actor, and member of both the Screen Actor’s Guild and Canadian Actor’s Equity, Professor Chaplin received her doctorate in modern European history from Rutgers University in 2002.