Michele Cohen – författare

The fashioning of English gentlemen in the eighteenth century was modelled on French practices of sociability and conversation. Michele Cohen shows how at the same time, the English constructed their cultural relations with the French as relations of seduction and desire. She argues that this produced anxiety on the part of the English over the effect of French practices on English masculinity and the virtue of English women.By the end of the century, representing the French as an effeminate other was integral to the forging of English, masculine national identity. Michele Cohen examines the derogation of women and the French which accompanied the emergent 'masculine' English identity. While taciturnity became emblematic of the English gentleman's depth of mind and masculinity, sprightly conversation was seen as representing the shallow and inferior intellect of English women and the French of both sexes.Michele Cohen also demonstrates how visible evidence of girls' verbal and language learning skills served only to construe the female mind as inferior. She argues that this perception still has currency today.

The fashioning of English gentlemen in the eighteenth century was modelled on French practices of sociability and conversation. Michele Cohen shows how at the same time, the English constructed their cultural relations with the French as relations of seduction and desire. She argues that this produced anxiety on the part of the English over the effect of French practices on English masculinity and the virtue of English women.By the end of the century, representing the French as an effeminate other was integral to the forging of English, masculine national identity. Michele Cohen examines the derogation of women and the French which accompanied the emergent 'masculine' English identity. While taciturnity became emblematic of the English gentleman's depth of mind and masculinity, sprightly conversation was seen as representing the shallow and inferior intellect of English women and the French of both sexes.Michele Cohen also demonstrates how visible evidence of girls' verbal and language learning skills served only to construe the female mind as inferior. She argues that this perception still has currency today.

Using pedagogy as a lens through which to explore issues of gender, social class, power and hegemony, Cohen's study makes a major new contribution to the study of education in eighteenth-century England.Through a detailed examination of contemporary methodologies, curricula, and practices this book brings together topics often treated separately: the education of boys and girls of the middling and the upper classes. Further, this study widens the scope of our definition of education to include the often-under-valued field of "accomplishments". Indeed, Cohen shows that accomplishments were a formal part of male and female education, with carefully theorised pedagogies, challenging the enduring perception that these subjects were superficial.Subject specific chapters on Latin and geography pedagogies examine the relations between these subjects and the competitions which shaped and produced them. While Latin pedagogy dominated eighteenth-century education, geography, as a modern subject, had to develop a new normative pedagogy. Cohen shows that girls were not excluded from learning a science like geography, and that the contemporary perception of the inferiority of their education as opposed to that of boys was constructed as part of the classic vs. modern debate. Further, chapters on debates surrounding public and private education, the Grand Tour, and conversation show that pedagogy is the thread linking education, gender, social class and politics.This book will be essential reading for historians of education, childhood and gender.