Dr. Cormack's research focuses on the French Revolution, particularly on political struggle resulting from competing claims to represent the nation. While his first book explores this dynamic in the French Navy, his second book examines the French Revolution’s impact in the Caribbean colonies of...
Dr. Cormack's research focuses on the French Revolution, particularly on political struggle resulting from competing claims to represent the nation. While his first book explores this dynamic in the French Navy, his second book examines the French Revolution’s impact in the Caribbean colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe, emphasizing the importance of the “revolutionary script” from metropolitan France.
Currently, Cormack's research concerns the French Legislative Assembly and the demise of the Constitution of 1791 and also examines the 18th-century Enlightenment, as well as the French Revolution’s influence on the development of the revolutionary tradition in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Graduate students working under his supervision have done projects on the Enlightenment, the cult of revolutionary martyrs, images of women during the French Revolution, French Protestants’ response to the French Revolution, and the links between divorce and reform of Jewish status in pre-revolutionary France.
Cormack received his PhD from Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario in 1992, and since 1998 has been a member of the Department of History at the University of Guelph where he teaches modern European history.