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Instructor: Dr. Daniel Heimmermann became the fifth Chancellor of the University of South Carolina Aiken on July 1, 2021. Originally from Wisconsin, Chancellor Heimmermann received undergraduate degrees in History and Spanish before earning Master of Arts and Ph.D. degrees in early-modern French history from Marquette University. Before coming to USCA, Dr. Heimmermann served as Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Texas Permian Basin, where he ranked as the most senior chief academic officer in the University of Texas System. A historian of early-modern France, Dr. Heimmermann has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in early-modern European history and the French Revolution and Napoleonic periods. Description: The early-modern period in Europe witnessed what historians have called a “civilizing process” in which newly developed social customs and rules sought to transform human behavior to become more cerebral, refined, and peaceful. The repertoire of these ritualized social graces, or etiquette, was intended to instill in people self-control in order to subordinate brutish emotions and actions associated with the lower body in favor of rational and spiritual qualities represented by the upper body. A primary target for social and religious reformers was popular festivals such as Carnival, which heavily emphasized the gratification of the visceral lower body. Coming just before Lent, Carnival was a week of wild self-indulgence, gluttony, promiscuity, and violence, culminating with a drunken day of revelry on Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras. New manners, habits, and etiquette developed during the period sought to curb these unbridled carnivalesque tendencies to produce more “humane” beings and society. These included rituals related to the consumption of food (through dining rituals/etiquette), the pursuit of sexual pleasure/procreation (through courtship rituals), and the mitigation of violent impulses and actions (through organi
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