By Appointment
PhD, Emory University
MA, Emory University
BA, Hendrix College
Donna Bohanan's research interests include early modern France, provincial nobilities, and material culture.
Her first book, Old and New Nobility in Aix-en-Provence, 1600-1695: Portrait of an Urban Elite, appeared in 1992, and her second book, Crown and Nobility in Early Modern France was published in 2001. In 2012 her most recent book, Fashion beyond Versailles: Design in Seventeenth-Century France, was published by LSU Press. In this book she explores consumption patterns among noble families in the frontier province of Dauphiné; here consumption became for local elites a crucial means of defining their position in provincial society. Specifically, Bohanan uses notary inventories of noble estates to reconstruct the contents and decorative schemes of their homes. Based on this archival material she has also contributed a chapter to Furnishing the Eighteenth Century, edited by Kathryn Norberg and Dena Goodman (Routledge, 2007).
Bohanan teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on early modern Europe, which include her course on daily life and popular culture entitled, "Private Lives and Public Places in Early Modern Europe" and her course "Fashion, Consumption and the World of Goods in Early Modern Europe." In addition, she regularly teaches in the world history program.
early modern France, provincial nobilities, and material culture