PMRG AGM & Public Lecture: “Love in a Time of War: Correspondence of the French Court in the Last Days of the Italian Wars”

This year’s PMRG Annual General Meeting will be be held on Tuesday 28 March 2017. The meeting will begin at 6pm, in the Austin Lecture Hall (1.59, first floor, Arts Building), UWA.

The meeting will be followed, at approximately 6.30pm, by the 2017 AGM Lecture. This is a free event, to which all are welcome. RSVPs are not required.

“Love in a Time of War: Correspondence of the French Court in the Last Days of the Italian Wars”

by Professor Susan Broomhall

Jean Clouet, Portrait of Anne de Montmorency, c.1530In the last campaigns of the Italian Wars, a conflict that had divided European states for more than fifty years, four key political protagonists in France exchanged letters. French campaigns against Habsburg forces in the north had separated the king, Henri II, from his queen, Catherine de’ Medici, his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, Duchess of Valentinois, and his chief military advisor, the constable Anne de Montmorency. In doing so, four individuals whose political fates were tightly interwoven in orientation around their monarch took to letters to express their hopes, desires and fears at war.

Susan Broomhall is Professor of History at The University of Western Australia and Director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She was a Foundation Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. She became an Honorary Chief Investigator in 2014, having taken up an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. She is currently working on a study of emotions in the letters of Catherine de Medici.