Alain Corbin (born January 12, 1936, in Courtomer is a French historian. He is a specialist of the 19th century in France and in microhistory. Trained in the Annales School, Corbin's work has moved away from the large-scale collective structures studied by Fernand Braudel towards a history of sensibilities which is closer to Lucien Febvre's history of mentalités. His books have explored the histories of such subjects as male desire and prostitution, sensory experience of smell and sound, and the 1870 burning of a young nobleman in a Dordogne village. Source: Wikipedia (en)