Episode 51: Napoleon with Corinne Gressang and Laura O'Brien

With Napoleon hitting the big screen this past week, we decided it was time for our first emergency podcast. This week we recruited French history scholars Corinne Gressang and Laura O'Brien onboard to talk about what the film did right, what it did wrong, and why exactly can't we seem to get Bonaparte right onscreen.

About our guests:
Dr. Corinne Gressang began as an Assistant Professor of History at Slippery Rock University in the Fall of 2023. She specializes in the history of the French Revolution, but she teaches various courses on Early Modern and Modern European History. She grew up in Western Pennsylvania and received her undergraduate degree in History with a minor in Legal Studies from Grove City College in 2013. From there, she received her MA and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2015 and 2020, respectively. She spent three years teaching at Erskine College in Due West, SC as an Assistant Professor before moving back home to Western Pennsylvania to teach at Slippery Rock.

Her dissertation topic developed after reading an editorial in a short-lived Catholic newspaper called L’Ange Gabriel (1799). The editor argued that the French nuns had suffered expulsion from their convents, and they were the most unfortunate victims of the Revolutionary decade. Dr. Gressang’s curiosity about what became of these women became the focus of her dissertation which she is currently revising for publication.

She is a member of the American Historical Association, the Western Society for French History, the Society for French Historical Studies, Phi Alpha Theta, and the American Catholic Historical Association. Dr. Gressang currently serves as an Assistant Digital Coordinator for the Society for French Historical Studies and is a member of the executive council for the Western Society for French History. She has won numerous teaching awards including the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the University of Kentucky in 2018-2019 and the Younts Excellence in Teaching Award in 2021-2022 from Erskine College.

Dr. Laura O'Brien joined Northumbria University  in September 2015, having previously taught at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, Université Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and the University of Sunderland. She completed her PhD at University College Dublin, where she held an Irish Research Council ‘Government of Ireland’ Postgraduate Scholarship, and was a doctoral fellow at the UCD Humanities Institute. Between 2010 and 2013 Laura was an Irish Research Council/Marie Curie Actions COFUND Fellow, based at Trinity College Dublin and the Centre de recherches en histoire du XIXe siècle, Université Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne).