Sara Kimble

School of Continuing and Professional StudiesAssociate ProfessorFacultyFull Time
Contact
sara.kimble@depaul.edu312-362-6724

BIO

Sara L. Kimble obtained her BA with honors at the University of California, Santa Cruz and her MA and PhD in modern European history at the University of Iowa. She researches the history of women and law with an emphasis on the legal profession in France, international networks, and political engagement. She has also studied methods for teaching Holocaust history at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Illinois Holocaust Educational Foundation. She is devoted to working collaboratively with students on their individual educational paths through the study of history, social justice, and the liberal arts. 

Affiliations

Areas of Research and Teaching Interest

  • Modern European history especially France
  • Women's and gender history
  • Legal history & history of the legal professions
  • Liberal arts education

Major Publications

Kimble, Sara L. “Internationalist Women against Nazi Atrocities in Occupied Europe, 1941–1947." Journal of Women's History, vol. 35, no. 1, spring 2023.   

Kimble, Sara L. “Women's Rights and The Rights of Man: Women's Status Under Law as the Measure of 'Civilization' in French Political and Legal Discourse, 1869-1914," in Pierre Allorant, Walter Badier,  Raphaël Cahen, Sean Morris ed., Laws and International Relations: Actors, Institutions, and Comparative Legislations (Pedone, France, 2024). 

Kimble, Sara L. “Political Engagement By 'Apolitical' Female European Lawyers: The International Federation of Women Judges and Lawyers, 1928-1948," Clio@Themis: Revue électronique d'histoire du droit [France], issue 25 (2023). Special issue on “Gender, History, and Law."

Kimble, Sara L. “Challenges to the Inequality of Women in French Private Law: A Brief History and Comparative Comment on English Private Law," in Dr. Manuel Bastias Saavedra and Dr. Peter Collin eds., Law and Diversity: European and Latin American Experiences from a Legal Historical Perspective (Frankfurt: Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, forthcoming).

Kimble, Sara L. “Of 'Masculine Tyranny' and the 'Women's Jury': The Gender Politics of Jury Service in Belle Époque France." Law and History Review, vol. 37 issue 4, November 2019, 867–902.

“Politics, Money, and Distrust: French-American Alliances in the International Campaign for Women’s Equal Rights, 1925–1930.” In Nimisha Barton and Richard Hopkins ed., Practiced Citizenship: Women, Gender and the State in Modern France (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press (January 2019), 219-260.

Kimble, Sara L. and Marion Röwekamp, “Exclusion and Inclusion in the Legal Professions: Negotiating Gender in Central Europe, 1887-1945,” Acta Poloniae Historica [Warsaw]; volume 117 (2018), special volume on “Gender and Science in East-Central Europe,” 51-93. Published by the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences.

“Transatlantic Networks for Legal Feminism, 1888-1912,” Forging Bonds across Borders. Transatlantic Collaborations for Women’s Rights and Social Justice in the Long Nineteenth Century, special issue of German Historical Institute Bulletin Supplement, edited by Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson and Anja Schüler, vol. 13 (2017), 55-73

Kimble, Sara L. and Marion Röwekamp eds., New Perspectives on Modern European Women’s Legal History. Series: Routledge Research in Gender and History. New York: Routledge, 2017.

“The Rise of ‘Modern Portias’: Female Lawyers and Activism in Third Republic France.” In New Perspectives on European Women in the Legal Professions, edited by Sara L. Kimble and Marion Röwekamp, 125-151. New York: Routledge, 2017.

Kimble, Sara L. and Marion Röwekamp, “Introduction: Legal Cultures and Communities of Female Protest in Modern European History, 1860-1960s.” In New Perspectives on European Women in the Legal Professions, edited by Sara L. Kimble and Marion Röwekamp, 1-24. New York: Routledge, 2017.

“Feminist Lawyers and Legal Reform in Modern France, 1900-1946.” In Women in Law and Lawmaking in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe, edited by Eva Schandevyl, 45-73. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014.

“Popular Legal Journalism in the Writings of Maria Vérone.” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, vol. 39 (2011): 224-235. (Journal now title: The Journal of the Western Society for French History.)

“No Right to Judge: Feminism and the Judiciary in Third Republic France.” French Historical Studies, vol. 31:4 (Winter 2008): 609-641.

 “Emancipation through Secularization: French Feminist Views of Muslim Women’s Condition in Interwar Algeria.” French Colonial History, vol. 7 (2006): 109-128.

 “‘For the Family, France, and Humanity’: Authority and Maternity in the Tribunaux pour enfants.” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, Selected Papers of the 2003 Annual Meeting, vol. 31 (2003): 212-229. Journal now titled: The Journal of the Western Society for French History.

Co-author, Roundtable on “Gendering French History: The Significance of Karen Offen's Books on the Woman Question in France,” Journal of the Western Society for French History, 51: 4, 28–48. https://doi.org/10.3998/wsfh.7469

Kimble, Sara L. “The Genocide Convention is ‘Our Cause’: International Women’s Advocacy for the Criminalization of Genocide, 1945–1952.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 38, issue 3, Winter 2024, pp. 323–339, https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcae045 [*Awarded DeBenedetti Prize from Peace History Society, 11/8/2025]

Cahen, Raphaël, Sara L. Kimble, Pierre Allorant, Walter Badier & P. Sean Morris eds., Relations internationales et droit(s): acteurs, institutions et législations comparées/ Law(s) and international relations: actors, institutions and comparative legislation (1815-1914). Paris: Éditions Pedone, France, 2024.

Kimble, Sara L. “Lilli Selig (1899-1969)” and “Antoinette Quinche (1896-1979)” in Marion Röwekamp ed., JURISTINNEN – Lexikon zu Leben und Werk. 2nd edition [Encyclopedia of the lives and works of women lawyers] (Germany, Nomos, 2024).

Encyclopedia Articles

Entries in World History Encyclopedia vol. 14 on New Professional Opportunities for Women:  Nursing, Teaching, Clerical, and Feminist Movements in Europe. (ABC-CLIO, 2011).

Entry on France in An Encyclopedia of Infanticide, Brigitte Bechtold and Donna Cooper Graves, ed. (Edwin Mellen Press, 2010). 

Book Reviews

Review of Rachel G. Fuchs, Contested Paternity: Constructing Families in Modern France in Gender and History (forthcoming).

Review of Elisa Camiscoli, Reproducing the French Race. Immigration, Intimacy andEmbodiment in the Early Twentieth Century in Gender and History, vol. 23:1 (August 2011): 468470.

Review of Harriet Pass Freidenreich, Female, Jewish, and Educated: The Lives of Central European University Women in Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal, vol. 4:2 (2007).

Review of Sylvia Paletschek and Bianka Pietrow-Ennker eds., Women's Emancipation Movements in the Nineteenth Century: A European Perspective in H-France Review, vol. 5:31 (March 2005): 128-131.

Academic Works in Progress

Sara L. Kimble, Women, Feminism, and the Law in Modern France: Justice Redressed (New York: Routledge, Routledge Research in Gender and History, forthcoming). [ISBN: 978-0-415-74908-4 HB]

Professional Affiliations

  • American Historical Association
  • Coordinating Council for Women in History
  • French Historical Society