The ANR JCJC project The Castrati: Experiences of Otherness in Enlightenment Europe (CastrAlter) is led by a young researcher specializing in the history of gender, the body and sexuality. Over a period of 36 months, it brings together a post-doctoral fellow and researchers in human and social sciences (history, gender studies and musicology) from French and international universities. The project aims to historicize the notion of gender fluidity and to question the effects of unequal rhetoric and gender-related practices in early modern Europe by focusing on Italian castrati (16th-18th centuries). He thus questions the reception by the singers of artistic, legal, philosophical and scientific discourses which make them a repelling figure of the Enlightenment (in England and France more particularly, then from the 1760s within the current of the Illuminismo). Their castration does indeed produce a disturbance in gender norms, as it would cause both physical and moral effeminacy, in turn influencing their sexual orientation. Research on these singers, who are still scarce in history, has focused on normative sources that marginally evoke the views and experiences of castrati in the face of the processes of otherness which constrain them. By focusing on sources produced by castrati, confronted with other archival documents on their living and working environment, the CastrAlter project intends to study the variety of perceptions and social trajectories of singers. He postulates the existence of self-redefinition processes ranging from phenomena of over-virilization by castrati wanting to enter into social conformity to the development of models valuing markers of subordinate masculinity. Three lines of research have been defined from the documentation inventoried through preparatory programs. The time of socialization of the castrati in the Neapolitan conservatories will allow us to grasp the progressive shaping of the divo (celebrity of baroque music) as it emerges from childhood (axis 1). The time of stage practices, and in particular of international mobility in France and England, will be an opportunity to analyze strategies for adapting to criticism from audiences outside the peninsula (axis 2). Finally, the writing practices of the castrati will make it possible to question their own narratives concerning their gender identity, their relationship to the body, to sexuality or to filiation (axis 3). This socio-cultural history project also develops an interdisciplinary history / performing arts methodology, matured by the young researcher during previous collaborations with theater professionals. By integrating an artistic team, in particular made up of specialists in baroque opera (staging, choreography, singing and music), it is a question of considering scenic methodologies as possible levers for the development of historical hypotheses (relating to the bodywork, the notion of performance ...) on the experiences of castrati. In terms of impacts and spinoffs, the project aims to fill the lack of historicization of social groups challenging gender binarity in the early modern era and to shed light on the processes of contemporary historical filiation in the activist, artistic and scientific field around castrati. The valuation of the project will give rise to numerous publications (book, articles, journal files, Hypotheses notebook), to research instruments (database), a virtual exhibition, teachings within the master's degree in Gender Studies as well as a theatrical restitution (theatrical conference or documentary theater) which the artistic team of the project will take care of.

Medieval Filiations, Sameness, Otherness: Social Experiences and Representations of Kinship in cases of Defects of Filiation The manner in which medieval people thought about, experienced, and understood kinship in the Latin West (9th – mid-16th centuries) is at the heart of the Fil.IAM project. C. Avignon heads a programme of research on the social and cultural impacts of the hierarchy of filiation resulting from an “error of birth”. This canonical defectus, creator of legal incapacity, stigmatised illegitimate children with the stain of bastardy. Tensions led to the denial or degradation of filiations, as well as to strategies of secondary affiliations (nutritive and artificial), which will be compared to the issues of, as well as the reasoning and motives behind, exclusion and vulnerability in cases of other degraded forms of filiation linked to disabilities of infirmity or illness. The programme will insure that weak signals from sparse documentation will receive concerted, maximised treatment. At the same time, it will provide a fresh reading of medieval bastardy through a comparison between the expressions et representations of legal incapacity and those of bodily infirmities. A team of international collaborators will provide the programme with their expertise in digital humanities, their experience in epistemological and technical issues, and their mastery of these fields of study and corpus of documentation (thematic, jurisdictional, and chronological) in order to examine how identity markers were transmitted and circulated, to understand how processes of stigmatisation and individuation took place, and to reexamine the concept and experiences of filiation through an interdisciplinary approach. The goal is to insure that sources are collected which allude to the hierarchy of filiation, as well as to mobilise symbolic speech on kin relationships, in order to appreciate what bastardy did to western kinship. A tool will be created to analyse normative discursive productions and archives on the practice to grasp and process the semantic fields used to talk about, signify, or connotate the degradation of filial relationships. In order to appreciate the specificity of the social construct of bastardy, in regards to the impairment and disability of inhibited bodies, a doctoral contract is being financed to accompany research on the following subject: “Defects, Incapacity, Stain. Discours et representations of inhibited bodies in Christian society (12th-15th centuries).” The assessment of available sources and their promotion in the platform is a prerequisite to analysing the hierarchy of filiation, and the limits of prevented or degraded affiliation. The results will be examined within the framework of research encounters which will provide an overview of the historical analysis as well as the legal, literary, and anthropological issues at play in expressions of filiation in traditional societies. The project also defends the legitimacy of medievalist expertise in contemporary debates over western kinship and other forms of family networks, by putting the tensions at work (and their respective strengths) into historical context, between naturalisation of kinship and social construction, between identity and otherness. Exploring these questions from a medieval standpoint makes it possible to calm the terms of the debate, experience its deep historicity, and grasp the continuity, limits, or ruptures in the understanding and activation of blood relationships as well as the part of collective imagination built into the normative and symbolic hierarchisation of family relationships. It will accompany C. Avignon in a project of HDR deposit, then ERC.

The aim of the AmateurS project is to write collectively a history of amateurs in science echoing the questions raised by contemporary participatory and citizen science and by sciences in the digital era. This history will take into account new perspectives formulated within the Science Studies and within social and cultural history. Our research is based on two hypotheses: 1° Looking at the past enriches our understanding of the present, by bringing continuities to light as much as by revealing the discontinuities emphasized in most surveys focusing on the 20th Century and on the present. 2° A transdisciplinary approach enhances our understanding of amateur activities in science. This project brings together historians of three scientific fields: two (astronomy and archaeology) are taken into account in many classical historical studies, one (medical sciences) is more original in this perspective, even though it is central in contemporary participatory and citizen science. The project is organized according to 3 research lines (WP) and one transversal theme. WP 1 - Figures of the amateur This WP relies on the production and the interpretation of a database collecting all the French publications (books and periodicals) displaying the word "amateur" in their title, between 1850 and 1950. Two sets (corpus) of sources (texts and images) will be extracted from the database, allowing the team to analyse the whole range amateur practices, the place of scientific activities among these practices, and the scientific fields favored by amateurs. Free access to the database will be granted to scholars and the general public at the end of the project, through a specifically designed digital platform. WP 2 - A subjective history of the amateur's worlds Identities and self definitions will be studied from a perspective "from below". The aim of this WP is to capture the amateurs' point of view on the science they practice, on their own identity as scientists, on their relations with the "professionals" and with other practioners they consider illegitimate. In this WP we will focus on two topics studied at a micro-historical scale: 1° conflicts shifting the boundaries between "amateurs" and "professionals", as well as instances of consolidation of these boundaries; 2° the social worlds and the personal networks of the amateurs. WP 3 - Practices and know-how This WP focuses on the material productions of the amateurs (instruments, experimental devices, scale models, images, etc.). In this WP we focus on the practical gestures and on the know-how which are mobililized by amateurs in the production of material devices, on the uses of these devices and on their circulation among a broader public. Transversal theme : Women as amateurs We will confront the results of our history of amateurs in science with the perspectives developed in the historiography of women in science.

GEMER takes into account all the records concerning seamen. This project cross-references the divisions of seamen's registers and the crews books with the civil registers. This allows us to follow each seaman in his navigations, but also to study his coastal links (family, habitat, multi-activity) and get a more precise idea about the problems concerning health or hygienic conditions (anthropology, epidemiology, funeral rites). This is a whole population, "the people of the shores" that emerges and that during eight generations, faces crises, wars and diseases, endures the weight of the State and adjusts to the new social and economic conditions. The rich sources of information allow us to tell the story of all these women and men. These sources allow to retrace a culture both wordily and intangible, always shaped by tradition, sometimes shaped by renewal with its unavoidable disruptions, renewal which is based on submission or resilience. GEMER is therefore a database where there will be 20.000 seamen registered in the class records covering the period from 1690 to 1790: in this database, you will also find the relatives of these seamen, their ascendant, descendant or collateral kinships, as well as their godfathers and godmothers. Three territories having equivalent populations and geographic configurations have been chosen: Plessis-Bertrand Estate with Cancale, the maritime district of the Seudre with Marennes and the district of Berre Pond with Martigues. This research will allow us to carry out a wide and complex study in historical anthropology, by multiplying science-based measures on the three defined areas of interest which complement, support and cross one another. We will study the lenght of careers at sea, the duration of navigations, the number of accidents and epidemics on board, the death rate at sea, the organization of labour and the question of wages. Besides, when seamen go back home, they are reunited with their families. So our study will deal with the way the sailors’ wives, sisters or daughters handle the situation in their prolonged absence. The study will also deal with agency, solidarity amongst women, female multi-activity, additional incomes, relationship with the representatives of the Church (the priests) and relationship with the representatives of the State (the Admiralty officers, "la sénéchaussée", the Commissioner of the "Marine du Roi"). After observing the health conditions of the seamen and their families’ questions may be asked about fecundity and survival, mainly concerning mothers and their infants. The way of life of these populations and the dangers that threaten the seamen have an influence on this social group’s demography. Its components linked with historical demography (marriage rate, fecundity, mortality, mobilities and migrations) will be analysed. What’s the GEMER project? It is an open access database: it will allow us to organize several study sessions that will lead to many publications as well as an international conference with proceedings both in English and in French; there will be also a book including all the elements highlighted by this research and a website will be opened. GEMER will organize a travelling exhibition and a docu drama about a trip to the South Sea will be also made: this documentary fiction will speak about seamen who sail to Newfoundland but who also "discover" the West Indies and the transatlantic slave trade, then, they go to the Mediterranean and finally travel to China. When war breaks out once again, they are also formidable privateers. A close relationship will be established with learned societies in order to reproduce this pattern, as well as with the Education Office.

The EN-MIG project focuses on the forced migrations of children from different parts of the collapsing French colonial empire, first and foremost in Indochina, Algeria, Madagascar, but also Africa and areas that had been decolonised without achieving independence (like the overseas territories). This project takes into account the great diversity of these migrations, of which many were presented as "repatriations". Children were displaced with their families or parents, only with their siblings, or even alone and unaccompanied. The obligation to migrate originated with the French government and/or other actors more or less working with its support. Some groups of children were taken into the care of organisations, some were hosted in suitable centres or preexisting structures, and still others were placed in host families or even put up for adoption in France. EN-MIG aims to understand the individual motivations for integration into the host society among the children and young people who had been uprooted during a moment of crisis. To do this, it historically analyses the effects of postcolonial biopolitics on the personal growth of the child victims of forced migration. Using the preparatory work of three partner research laboratories (TEMOS at the Université d’Angers, ISP at the Université Paris-Nanterre, IMAf at the Aix-Marseille Université), the hypothesis underpinning this research is that the personal growth of child victims of forced migration resulted from connections between the relationships to surroundings and environment (such as policies of racialisation, organisation of care, and the location and type of accomodations), relationships with other people (such as families, parents, siblings, and religious or secular educators) and relationship to identity (such as race, gender, country of origin, climate and food, language and culture, name changes, or a family which remained in the home country). The three main research themes are: 1. The postcolonial nature of the displacements of mixed-race children. 2. Family relationships under the strain of forced migration under decolonisation. 3. Integration and subjective construction of displaced children. A transversal theme will focus on name changes (renaming) as a subjective process of reconstructing the displaced children. Thus, EN-MIG is situated at the junctions of several research fields that have already been widely studied separately (youth and empire-building, children and war, and migrations), but would need more extensive study of how they intersect. EN-MIG's main methodological choice is to propose a history based on the firsthand accounts of the children and young people directly concerned, as well as the accounts produced as they got older. It is a matter of doing history that is close to the ground, or more precisely history at the level of children, who are the main protagonists of this story. In order to do this, great importance will be accorded to their voices and stories, whether told during childhood or later during adulthood. This priority entails collaborative interactions between researchers and actors/witnesses: interviews, participatory observation, writing workshops, and photographs. Indeed, those directly concerned have high expectations in historical knowledge in order to understand what they were forced to undergo. Placing their personal life experiences in the larger historical context helps them to better understand their own history. Apart from academic publications, the results of this research will be displayed in various ways (such as videos, virtual exhibitions, and school sessions). EN-MIG will also help to enrich and deepen understanding of current migrations of children, accompanied or not.