For a sketch of Susanna Barrows, published a couple of years ago, see http://history.berkeley.edu/newsletter/2008_Summer/barrows.html On 10/29/10, Robin G W Room <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > I got the news this morning that Susanna Barrows has died. It hit me > hard. > I happen to be in Paris, by myself for a couple of days. I decided > the best tribute I could think of was to go to the "France 1500" exhibition > at the Grand-Palais, a luminous show about France at the junction between > the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. > It was a great show, but it was not > as Susanna would have organized it. The material of the show was the art > and books and furniture of the nobility, beautiful and grand and sometimes > revealing about their lives, and certainly informative about historical > currents and influences. Susanna's France in 1500 would have been about how > peasants and townspeople lived, how they laughed and danced and ate and > loved and fought. And, of course, how they drank. > To me, Susanna was a > historian of drinking, and all that goes along with it. Whereas for her own > scholarly tribe, the historians, the alcohol was incidental; she was a > historian of mentalities, or culture, or a social historian, who had found > a rich new trove in the French archives in the records of what went on in > the French cafés and their predecessors turned in to the French state by > police and informers. > I met Susanna first at what turned out to be her > hiring lecture for the History Department at UC Berkeley. Three of us from > the Alcohol Research Group had noticed that the History Department was > sponsoring this lecture about alcohol in France by a visiting professor, > and decided to go. Susanna later told me that she wondered who the three > faces in the front row were, smiling and bobbing enthusiastically. She > opened the talk with a picture of a bill from when she had been in hospital > in France, to illustrate the difference in French and American mentality on > wine. As a matter of course, the French hospital had served wine with the > dinners for in-patients; but her American health insurer had a category in > the bill labeled "extra wine", which they declined to pay. The talk went on > from there to open a window for us on the ideas and social history around > wine in France, particularly in the 19th century - a look into the past > vividly illustrated with slides of caricatures by Daumier, of impressionist > and later paintings of drinkers and drinking places. She got the job. And > so began a new chapter in Susanna's main vocation, as teacher and mentor to > a multitude of doctoral students in history. "Teacher and mentor" doesn't > really convey how important she was to a generation and more or historians > who got their start in Susanna's courses and seminars. The testimony of a > few of them can be read in the Friends of Cal History Newsletter for > Summer, 2008 > (http://history.berkeley.edu/newsletter/2008_Summer/barrows.html [1]), when > the UC Berkeley Graduate Division awarded her the Sarlo Distinguished > Graduate Student Mentoring Award. As that article notes, one of her former > students pointed out that "All but one of the twenty-seven or so theses > [she] directed have become university press books." And those books have > put "what the French call 'l'usine Barrows' (the Barrows factory) at the > forefront of the field…. In short, Susanna Barrows is the major graduate > teacher of her generation in modern French history." The article also > notes that the dissertations Susanna directed had little relationship with > one another. Her genius was to help each student to develop his or her own > interest. So there have been only a relatively few students over the years > which have picked up her interest in matters relating to alcohol. In this > respect, those of us connected through her alcohol side only every now and > then had to share her with the historians. Although when those connections > did happen - I remember an uproarious excursion from Paris for an > afternoon-long lunch at an Orléans restaurant with two Michelin stars - it > was clear that Susanna was a central figure in the overlapping circles of > American historians of France and, indeed, Europe. She was loved, but also > respected - she had clearly paid her dues in the French archives, keeping a > list, for instance, of when each of the departmental archives was closed > for summer vacation. The biggest work connection which Susanna and I had > came when, under her influence, the Berkeley Alcohol Research Group hosted > an international conference on the social history of alcohol in 1984. > Funding for the conference came from NIAAA, which in those days had a > broader view of its duties to scholarship than at some later times. The > conference had a mixture of social historians and social scientists > interested in history; as I remember, the proceedings (in the first > reference below) included some interesting comments on each others' habits > from the two tribes. It became the first of a series of alcohol and drug > history conferences which continues today, most recently in Glasgow > (http://historyofalcoholanddrugs.typepad.com/alcohol_and_drugs_history/conferences/ > [2]) While a number of other papers from the Berkeley conference were > published in Contemporary Drug Problems, those which fitted in a social > history frame were collected in a book Susanna and I edited (the second > reference below). Included in the book was her wonderful paper, using > archival materials, on 19th-century Parisian cafés as "the parliament of > the people". The Susanna I knew was full of life and joy. She loved France > and the French, and particularly her first love, Paris. But it was a love > that could be critical, or at least was open to teasing. She treasured the > details of life, of how people differed in how they lived, of what > translated and what did not translate between cultures. She was always > ready to follow an intellectual trail, often with fruitful results. The > world is less without her. Robin > Susanna Barrows, Robin Room and Jeffrey > Verhey, eds. (1987) The Social History of Alcohol: Drinking and Culture in > Modern Society. Berkeley: Alcohol Research Group. > Susanna Barrows and Robin > Room, eds. (1991) Drinking: Behavior and Belief Systems in Modern History. > Berkeley: University of California Press. > > Links: > ------ > [1] > http://history.berkeley.edu/newsletter/2008_Summer/barrows.html > [2] > http://historyofalcoholanddrugs.typepad.com/alcohol_and_drugs_history/conferences/ > -- David M. Fahey Professor Emeritus of History Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056 USA