Nina Kushner
Associate Professor, History
Scholarly Interests
Women, gender and sexuality in eighteenth-century France; history of sexuality
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Professor Kushner is a specialist in early modern and eighteenth-century European social and cultural history, with an emphasis on France, women, gender, and the history of sexuality.
Her book Erotic Exchanges: The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Cornell, 2013) used police and judicial records alongside contemporary commentaries to reconstruct the demimonde of eighteenth-century Paris. Professor Kushner co-edited a volume of essays titled Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France (LSU, 2015), and another, French Histories of Sexuality From the Enlightenment to the Present (University of Nebraska, 2023), which examines how the history of sexuality challenges, nuances, and expands our view of the past.
Her current projects include a monograph currently titled “The Rules of Adultery: Sexual Culture in the Old Regime,” which is a study of marriage, cheating, and the construction of social identity in Old Regime France. She is also co-editing (with Dan Orrells) the six-volume series A Cultural History of Prostitution in the West for Bloomsbury Press, and the Handbook of the History of Sexuality (with Nicole von Germeten) also with Bloomsbury.
Professor Kushner’s teaching repertoire includes courses on the history of early modern Europe, the histories of women and gender, witchcraft, the history of policing, and the history of sexuality.
Professor Kushner received a B.A. in history and religion from Dartmouth College in 1990, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1994 and 2005, respectively. She spent some of the intervening years in the Peace Corps in West Africa and working as a tour guide in New York City. She taught at the College of Charleston for several years before coming to Clark in 2005.
She lives in Worcester with her husband, two children, and two dogs.Degrees
- Ph.D. in European History, Columbia University, 2005
- M.Phil. in European History, Columbia University, 1996
- M.A. in European History, Columbia University, 1994
- B.A. in History and Religion, Dartmouth College, 1990
Affiliated Department(s)
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Scholarly and Creative Works
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Cambridge History of Sexuality
Chapter: Sex in Eighteenth-Century ParisPublished by Cambridge University Press
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2023
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French Histories of Sexuality from the Enlightenment to the Present
Chapter: Unchaste Women: Sexuality and Identity in the Eighteenth-CenturyPublished by University of Nebraska Press
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2023
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Cultural History of Prostitution in the Age of Enlightenment. Vol 4 of A Cultural History of Prostitution
Cultural History of Prostitution
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2023
Bloomsbury
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A Cultural History of Prostitution
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2023
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Vol. six volumes
Bloomsbury
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Publicity, Women, and the Ancien Regime
Society for French Historical Studies
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Charlotte, NC
March
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2022
Sponsored by SFHS
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"Ce qui est spécifiquement américain, c'est l'attaque organisée et politique de la science"
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2020
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“Will History Judge Trump? Only if We Preserve our Capacity for Judgment” (5/24/2020)
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2020
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Histories of French Sexuality from the Enlightenment to the Present
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2020
University of Nebraska Press
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Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century France
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2015
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ISBN # 9780807158319
Louisiana State University Press
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Erotic Exchanges: Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Paris
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2013
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ISBN #9781501705700
Cornell University Press
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