Laureate of the GIS Master's Thesis Prize 2022

Laureate of the 2022 GIS MA Prize

CAMILLE PAYEUR
Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

for her MA thesis entitled:

“Femmes, musique et franc-maçonnerie à la Société Olympique : enquête sur la sociabilité maçonnique et musicale parisienne à l'aube de la Révolution française”.

Her Master's thesis was defended in September 2022 under the co-supervision of Professors Lyse Roy and Pascal Bastien.

Abstract: 

The Société Olympique was a Parisian Masonic organization with an orchestra at its center, the Concert de la Loge Olympique. This organization, whose main objective was the promotion of music, was active in Paris from 1786 to 1789. This musical society had the peculiarity of being linked to the Olympique de la Parfaite Estime Masonic Lodge. The Freemasons of the Olympic Society financed the Concert de la Loge Olympique through their annual subscription. Until now, works devoted to the Olympic Society and its concert have given little consideration to the place and role of women initiates within the adopted lodge of the Olympic Society. Yet their numerical weight within the organization indicates that they played a fundamental role, if only in the mutation of Masonic sociability practices in contact with the codes of the aristocracy. The aim of this dissertation is to bring coherence to a historiography that still keeps some of its players on the sidelines.
Using the method of social network analysis and computer tools, we also analyze the circulation of Olympic Society initiates within other Masonic organizations. These graphical representations are used to explore the links between the Masonic and musical worlds in the second half of the 18th century. These initial observations are followed by other network analyses focusing on the movements of musicians from the Concert de la Loge Olympique within other musical institutions and other Masonic organizations, enabling us to measure the degree of social and professional integration of musicians at the heart of the Masonic world and the Parisian musical milieu. Finally, this dissertation examines the sociability practices of the elite in a Masonic and musical context, revisiting the history of Freemasonry and the social history of music through the prism of gender.

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President of the GIS MA Prize Jury : Michèle Cohen (Prof. Emerita in History) University College London, UK

Members of the 2022 GIS MA Prize Jury: 

- Richard Ansell (University of Leicester, UK)
- Simon Deschamps (Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) 
- Markman Ellis (Queen Mary University London, UK) 
- Mascha Hansen (Universität Greifswald, Germany) 
- Eleonora Sasso (Università Gabriele d’Annunzio, Chieti-Pescara, Italy)
- Charles Walton (University of Warwick, UK) 

+ Kimberley Page-Jones (UBO, Brest), coordinator of the H2020 DIGITENS project
+ Valérie Capdeville (USPN), director of the GIS Sociabilités