| 1 | Name: | Dr. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber | |
| Institution: | École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales | ||
| Year Elected: | 2008 | ||
| Class: | 4. Humanities | ||
| Subdivision: | 404a | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1936 | ||
Christiane Klapisch-Zuber is the former Director of Studies at the Centre de Recherches Historiques, l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She has been a pioneer in the study of family history and genealogy, with special reference to the lives of young girls, women, and artisans. Her groundbreaking study of the Florentine tax records of 1429, coauthored with David Herlihy, changed the course of the economic and social history of the family in early modern Italy, and was based on unprecedented statistical analysis. In subsequent research she investigated such original topics as family ritual in relation to naming, the phenomenon of the family tree as an image and scheme, the history of adoption, and the imaginary power of ancestors. Klapisch-Zuber has approached the history of "the petit peuple" of late medieval and early modern France and especially Italy from both micro- and macro- historical viewpoints. More recently she has turned her attention to the lineage of Florentine magnates and their relationship to the popolani in the fourteenth century. Her generosity as a scholar is legendary, as is her capacity to construct new historical narratives through extraordinary mining of the archives. Widely influential in several fields, Klapisch-Zuber is a truly international figure who has changed the course of historical research, and her many brilliant essays are widely translated in anthologies. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber was elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society in 2008. In 2016 she was awarded the Middle Ages Prince Provins. | |||