Erika Vause, Ph.D.
Lecturer
Email: emv1@sxu.edu
Area of Specialization
Modern European History
Biography
The only real ideas are the ideas of the shipwrecked.
-José Ortega y Gassett
Dr. Vause has been passionate about French history since high school when she (with help from her father) constructed a quarter-scale model guillotine to teach her AP European History class about the French Revolution. A West Coast native, she obtained her B.A. in History and English at the University of California Berkeley and her doctorate in Modern European History at the University of Chicago in June 2012. Her dissertation, which she is currently revising into a book, uses practices of and discourses surrounding bankruptcy and debt imprisonment in nineteenth-century France as a means of understanding broader shifts in the meanings of credit, debt, risk and failure in post-Revolutionary society. More generally, she is interested in what could be called the emotional life of money and finance and in future projects anticipates exploring this theme from a transnational perspective. Having become increasingly engaged not only by teaching and research, but also by the rethinking the place of the humanities in twenty-first century American society, she welcomes the opportunity to learn with, and from, her colleagues and students at Saint Xavier University.
Courses Offered
- History 101: World History to 1500
- History 102: World History Since 1500
- History 208: Modern European History 1789-present
Selected Publications
"'He Who Rushes to Riches Will Not Be Innocent': Commercial Honor and Commercial Failure in Post-Revolutionary France" French Historical Studies 35.2 (Summer 2012): 321-349.
"Things Under Control: The Musée Carnavalet and the Politics of Museal Media" The Chicago Art Journal (Fall 2006): 2-17.
Selected Honors
Doctorate with distinction, University of Chicago Department of History, 2012
Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship 2010-2011
Bourse Chateaubriand from the French Embassy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2008-2009
Georges Lurcy Fellowship for Research in France 2007-2008
University of Chicago Division of Social Sciences Graduate Student Achievement Fellowship 2005-2009
Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Chapter 2004
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