Two Transylvania University seniors visited Paris this past summer to immerse themselves in the story of a protofeminist playwright executed during the Reign of Terror.
Caroline Host and Harper Knox took advantage of a school research grant to study Olympe de Gouges, author of the 1791 “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen.”
Under the mentorship of professor Simonetta Cochis, their projects will culminate in a play and paper presentation. Host is working on a performance about the events leading up to de Gouges’ beheading during the revolution, and Knox is writing a senior thesis on “The Birth of the Citoyenne — Olympe de Gouges and the Legacy of the Feminine Enlightenment.”
The idea began in Cochis’ French I class when Host, long fascinated by that country’s revolution, mentioned wanting to write a play about the era. “Madame Cochis is the entire reason we were able to go,” said Host, who’s majoring in writing, rhetoric and communication along with English. After Host recruited Knox — a fellow French Revolution enthusiast — the pair crafted complementary research proposals around de Gouges.
Host’s project, “Playwriting in Paris: Characterizing the Life and Legacy of Olympe de Gouges during the Reign of Terror,” will include a 15-minute, one-act monologue. The play portrays de Gouges’ final night in prison as she awaits word on her claim of pregnancy — a real-life plea that failed to delay her execution.
The turning point for Host came inside the Conciergerie, the Revolutionary prison where de Gouges was held. Standing in the very cell once occupied by Marie Antoinette and later by de Gouges “forced me to think so much about the situation that Olympe was in,” she said.
Host’s monologue will receive a staged reading co-directed with senior theater major Stephanie Underwood and performed by a Transylvania actress. Details will be announced soon.
Both Host’s and Knox’s projects are helping bring the underrecognized historical figure to light.
Knox noted the lack of mention of de Gouges at the Musée Carnavalet history museum. Despite entire sections devoted to the Enlightenment and Revolution, “there really was no mention of her at all.”
That absence reflects how de Gouges is almost always confined to “feminist history” rather than remembered as a revolutionary or Enlightenment theorist in her own right, Knox continued. She plans to soon present a thesis examining why de Gouges remains largely absent from mainstream French Revolution historiography.
Beyond research, the students walked the streets de Gouges knew, visited the site of her execution (today a busy plaza near the Arc de Triomphe) and located the single historical marker in Paris that mentions her.
Both highlighted the trip’s transformative nature. “It’s one of those experiences that you’re going to be thinking about probably for the rest of your life,” said Knox, a history major who works at the Mary Todd Lincoln House in Lexington. “I feel like I’ve come away a different person.”
Host agreed: “Because of Transylvania, it made it such an accessible trip for us.”
The David and Betty Jones grant covered nearly all expenses — airfare, housing, meals, museum admissions and research materials — demonstrating the school’s commitment to faculty-mentored undergraduate research abroad.
“That’s the key part of the Transy experience,” Knox said. “You do get to experience so much more than just the classroom.”