I am the James B. Duke Professor of History and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. My research and teaching explore questions around gender, sexuality, and culture in modern Europe and especially France from the late 18th century through the mid 20th century. How did late capitalist French society represent and navigate cultural change by reworking 
traditional tropes of masculinity, femininity, labor, and taste? I teach courses on modern European culture and society, such as the history of the body, modern urban and consumer culture, European feminisms, and revolution and radicalism.
I am the author of Colette’s Republic: Work, Gender, and Popular Culture in France, 1870-1914 (Berghahn, 2009), which explores Third Republican French secular ideology and popular culture through the work and performance of the writer (and music-hall celebrity) Colette.
My second book, Working Girls: Sex, Taste, and Reform in the Parisian Garment Trades, 1880-1919, (Oxford University Press, 2019) interrogates representations of female Parisian garment workers in popular culture, social reform, and labor activism from the 1880s to the interwar.
In addition to my study of modern European culture and history, I was honored to help found and to serve as the inaugural chair of Davidson’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Department.
I can be reached at patilburg@davidson.edu
