New Books in French Studies

Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte, "In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025)

02 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the mid-1930s the amateur French ethnographer and filmmaker Bernard de Colmont ventured into the mountainous state of Chiapas to study the Lacandó...

Ida Susser, "The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century" (Routledge, 2026)

25 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Written under the shadow of growing authoritarianism in the United States and Europe, this book is an effort to understand resistance movements of the...

Mattie Fitch, "The People, the Workers, and the Citizens: Antifascist Cultures and the Popular Front in France, 1934–1939" (Routledge, 2025)

24 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Mattie Fitch, Associate Professor at Marymount University and author of The People, The Workers and the Citizens: Antifascist ...

Drew Flanagan, "From Occupation to Integration: Recivilizing the French Zone of Post-Nazi Germany, 1945-1955" (LSU Press, 2026)

22 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

After the collapse of the National Socialist regime in May 1945, France became one of four principal occupying powers in a defeated Germany. Within th...

Aurore Spiers, "Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978" (U California Press, 2026)

20 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when we assume women’s presence in film history instead of their absence? This is the question at the heart of Archiving the Past: W...

Penny Roberts, "Huguenot Networks: Truth and Secrecy in Sixteenth-Century Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

17 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Huguenot Networks: Truth and Secrecy in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge UP, 2025), Penny Robert's latest book, takes us into the world ...

Andrew W. M. Smith, "Make Cheese Not War: Transnational Resistance and the Larzac in Modern France" (Manchester UP, 2026)

16 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971, the French government announced a massive extension of its military base on the Larzac plateau in southern France. Land was to be expropriate...

Michaela Hulstyn, "Unselfing: Global French Literature at the Limits of Consciousness" (U Toronto Press, 2022)

07 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Altered states of consciousness – including experiences of deprivation, pain, hallucination, fear, desire, alienation, and spiritual transcendence –...

Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

07 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Leslie Barnes examines the ambivalences that mar...

Marta Lorimer, "Europe As Ideological Resource: European Integration and Far Right Legitimation in France and Italy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

05 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

How did the far right go from illegitimate fringe to contender for public office, and did Europe have anything to do with it? Europe As Ideological R...

The Club: Where American Artists Found Refuge in Belle Epoque Paris

02 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Belle Époque Paris, the Eiffel Tower was newly built, France was experiencing remarkable political stability, and American women were painting the...

Claire Goldstein, "Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

24 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the Sun King's Cosmos: Comets and the Cultural Imagination of Seventeenth-Century France (Northwestern University Press 2025) explores the rela...

Michael Bycroft, "Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

11 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution (U Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Michael Bycroft argues that gems were connec...

Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025)

09 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The introduction of the principle of women's reproductive liberty in France, tentatively by the family planning movement after 1960 and explicitly by ...

Jennifer Boum Make, "Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

04 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean (Rutgers UP, 2025) examines the relationship between the legacies of colonialism an...

Richard Vinen, "The Last Titians: How Churchill and De Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the World" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

04 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A compelling dual biography of Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle that shines new light on two of the greatest figures of the 20th century.Winsto...

E. T. Dailey, "Radegund: The Trials and Triumphs of a Merovingian Queen" (Oxford UP, 2023)

02 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A princess born to the Thuringian royal house. A captive in war, forced to marry the Frankish king who killed her family. A queen, who renounced her p...

Veronique Boone, "Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann" (Birkhaüser, 2024)

27 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Le Corbusier on Camera: The Unknown Films of Ernest Weissmann (Birkhaüser, 2024) is based on amateur films, shot by the architect Ernest Weissmann ...

Michèle Schaal, "Grrrl Writing: Virginie Despentes's Authorial Politics" (Peter Lang, 2026)

24 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

When Virginie Despentes (1969) published her provocative debut novel Baise-moi in 1994, no one could have anticipated how she would gradually become a...

Andrea Mansker, "Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France" (Cornell UP, 2024)

24 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Matchmaking and the Marriage Market in Postrevolutionary France (Cornell UP, 2024) gives an historical account of the evolution of the matchmakin...

Sally Frances Low, "Colonial Law Making: Cambodia Under the French" (NUS Press, 2023)

22 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1863 the French established a protectorate over the kingdom of Cambodia. The protectorate, along with Vietnam and Laos, later became part of the co...

Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)

18 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-impe...

Claire Nicolas, "Une si longue course: Sport, genre, et citoyenneté au Ghana et en Côte d’Ivoire (années 1900-1970)" (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2024)

11 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Claire Nicolas, a chercheuse du Fonds National Suisse at Basel University, a holder of a prestigious Ambizione Research Grant, ...

Cindy Anh Nguyen, "Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam" (U California Press, 2026)

06 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Libraries in French colonial Vietnam functioned as symbols of Western modernity and infrastructures of colonial knowledge. Yet Vietnamese readers purs...

Olivier Esteves, "France, You Love It but Leave It: The Silent Flight of French Muslims" (Polity, 2025)

06 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Their names are Mohamed, Samira, sometimes Matthieu or Sophie. They were born and bred in France and are highly qualified, but they have decided to go...

164 Maurice Samuels: Jewish Assimilation, Integration and the Dreyfus Affair (JP)

05 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

When it comes to the condition of Jews in Christian Europe, France was long known as the haven and heartland of integration and of toleration. And yet...

Andrew Billing, "Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing" (Routledge, 2023)

04 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-century Liberal Political Writing: Political Zoologies of the French Enlightenment (Routledge, 202...

Jacqueline Couti and Anny Dominique Curtius, "Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

03 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings (Liverpool UP, 2025) bridges the gap between the Car...

Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates" (Columbia UP, 2025)

30 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the simil...

Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff, "Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

24 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Today we are joined by Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff, who is an historian, specializing in global sport, communications and diplomacy. She is also the Director...

Susannah Wilson, "A Most Quiet Murder: Maternity, Affliction, and Violence in Late Nineteenth-Century France" (Cornell UP, 2025)

23 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Susannah Wilson joins Jana Byars to talk about A Most Quiet Murder: Maternity, Affliction, and Violence in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Cornell U...

Stuart Carroll, "Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

04 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Stuart Carroll's Enmity and Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2023) transforms our understanding of Europe between 1500 ...

Matt Dawson, "The Political Durkheim: Sociology, Socialism, Legacies" (Routledge, 2023)

03 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Dawson's The Political Durkheim: Sociology, Socialism, Legacies (Routledge, 2023) presents Durkheim as an important political sociologist, ins...

Andrew S. Curran, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson" (Other Press, 2026)

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An engaging investigation of how 13 key Enlightenment figures shaped the concept of race, from the acclaimed author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking...

Susan McCready, "Commemorative Acts: French Theatre and the Memory of the Great War" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on memory studies and theatrical history, Commemorative Acts: French Theatre and the Memory of the Great War (University of Toronto Press, ...

Maddalena Alvi, "The European Art Market and the First World War: Art, Capital, and the Decline of the Collecting Class, 1910–1925" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

17 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The outbreak of the First World War shattered the established European art market. Amidst fighting, looting, confiscations, expropriation fears and po...

Hannah Frydman, "Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France" (Cornell UP, 2025)

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Hannah Frydman r...

Aubrey Gabel, "The Politics of Play: Oulipo and the Legacy of French Literary Ludics" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Showing the political importance of play in postwar French literature In postwar France, authors approached writing ludically, placing rules and condi...

Melissa Byrnes, "Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)

13 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“A lot of things become possible when [the nation state] is not the only framework,” Melissa Byrnes reminds us in this deeply intimate local histo...

Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

10 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships...

Chad Augustine Córdova, "Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

06 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What good is aesthetics in a time of ecological crisis? Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France ...

Carolyn J. Eichner, "Feminism's Empire" (Cornell UP, 2022)

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Feminism's Empire (Cornell UP, 2022) investigates the complex relationships between imperialisms and feminisms in the late nineteenth century and dem...

Mary Edwards, "Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it is hard to think of him without imagining him in very particular contexts. One will likely ima...

Melodie H. Eichbauer, "Law in a Culture of Theology: The Use of Canon Law by Parisian Theologians, Ca. 1120-Ca. 1220" (Routledge, 2025)

16 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Law in a Culture of Theology: The Use of Canon Law by Parisian Theologians, ca. 1120-ca. 1220 (Routledge, 2025) considers the study of law within it...

Bryan A. Banks, "Write to Return: Huguenot Refugees on the Frontiers of the French Enlightenment" (McGill-Queen's, 2024)

15 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The revocation of the Edict of Nantes led more than 200,000 Huguenots to flee France after 1685. Many settled close to the country's frontiers, where...

Julie Fette, "Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature" (Routledge, 2025)

07 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature (Routledge, 2025) investigates the gender representations that French children's liter...

Sarah Griswold, "Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate" (Cornell UP, 2025)

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate (Cornell UP, 2025), Dr. Sarah Griswold shows how the Levant became a crucial front in ...

Kathryn Robson, "Beyond the Happy Ending: Imagining Happiness in Contemporary French Women's Writing and Film" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Kathryn Robson's Beyond the Happy Ending: Imagining Happiness in Contemporary French Women's Writing and Film (Liverpool UP, 2025), happiness (...

Maurice Samuels, "Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair" (Yale UP, 2024)

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In Alfred Dreyfus: The Man...

Paul Galvez, "Courbet's Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting" (Yale UP, 2022)

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1862 and 1866 Gustave Courbet embarked on a series of sensuous landscape paintings that would later inspire the likes of Monet, Pissarro, and ...

William Doyle, "Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution" (Reaktion Books, 2022)

19 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The French Revolution facilitated the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, but after gaining power he knew that his first task was to end it. In this book Will...

Gianna Englert, "Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage" (Oxford UP, 2024)

15 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wi...

Madeleine Chalmers, "French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn  (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) traces a genealogy of thinking and writing about technology, ...

Daniel J. Sherman, "Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Sarah talks to Daniel J. Sherman about his most recent book, Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940...

Miranda Spieler, "Slaves in Paris: Hidden Lives and Fugitive Histories" (Harvard UP, 2025)

08 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the decades leading up to the French Revolution, when Paris was celebrated as an oasis of liberty, slaves fled there, hoping to be freed. They pict...

Justine De Young, "The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Using artworks by Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others, The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern ...

Michelle Bumatay, "On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power" (Ohio State UP, 2025)

03 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power (The Ohio State UP, 2025) is the first book-length study in English about Black francophone car...

Eric T. Jennings, "Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean" (Yale UP, 2025)

02 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywher...

Matt Myers, "The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989" (Oxford UP, 2025)

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been i...

Todd McGowan, "The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The difficulty of Jacques Lacan's thought is notorious. The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan cuts through this difficulty to provide a clear, j...

Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz and Sara Garbagnoli "La Pensée Wittig: Une Introduction" (Payot, 2025)

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How is it possible to be a subject when faced with oppression? The revolutionary thought and work of French novelist and lesbian thinker Monique Witt...

I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“My name has become a horror to all those who want slavery,” declared Jean‑Jacques Dessalines as he announced the independence of Haiti, the mos...

Alex R. Tipei, "Unintended Nations: How French Liberals' Empire of Civilization Remade Southeast Europe and the Post-Napoleonic World" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025)

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the wake of Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, French liberals set out to create an informal empire. Their efforts to cultivate unequal partnerships with...

Kevin Passmore, "The Maginot Line: A New History of the Fall of France" (Yale UP, 2025)

13 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Maginot Line was a marvel of 1930s engineering. The huge forts, up to eighty meters underground, contained hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone e...

Laura Hobson Faure, "Who Will Rescue Us?: The Story of the Jewish Children who Fled to France and America During the Holocaust" (Yale UP, 2025)

12 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The first account of Jewish children’s flight from Nazi Germany to France—and their subsequent escape to America from the Vichy regime At the eve...

Christopher C. Gorham, "Matisse at War: Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France" (Citadel Press, 2025)

09 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1940, with the Nazis sweeping through France, Henri Matisse found himself at a personal and artistic crossroads. His 42-year marriage had ended, he...

Robert Ivermee, "Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India" (Oxford UP, 2025)

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is a powerful new account of a chapter in history that is crucial to understand, yet often overlooked. For 150 years, from the reign of Louis XIV...

Chris Millington, "A History of Fascism in France: From the First World War to the National Front" (Bloomsbury, 2019)

31 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

FASCISM...FRANCE. Two words/ideas that scholars have spent much time and energy debating in relationship to one another. Chris Millington's A Histor...

Diana Souhami, "No Modernism Without Lesbians" (Head of Zeus Book, 2020)

31 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Diana Souhami talks about her new book No Modernism Without Lesbians, out 2020 with Head of Zeus books. A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2020. This ...

Jérémy Filet, "The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational Travel and Small-States' Diplomacy" (Manchester UP, 2025)

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational travel and small-states' diplomacy (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Jérémy Filet is the fir...

Peter K. Andersson, "The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour" (Oxford UP, 2025)

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A history of the dandy from below, from Beau Brummell and Baudelaire to Bowie and Bolan... and beyond. The historical figure of the dandy has commonly...

Mark Braude, "The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Empire to Exile" (Penguin Press, 2018)

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I must’ve been a kid when I first heard the palindrome “Able I was ere I saw Elba”. Napoleon didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. “Elba” m...

Charly Coleman, "The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment" (Stanford UP, 2021)

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Charly Coleman's latest book, The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press, 2021) is at...

Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising st...

Christy Pichichero, "The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon" (Cornell UP, 2018)

27 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Covering the pivotal period from the mid-seventeenth century through the era of the French Revolution, Christy Pichichero's The Military Enlightenme...

Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "gr...

Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The Politics of Involuntary Childlessness in Twentieth-Century France" (Manchester UP, 2025)

06 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childle...

Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira, "Ascending Republic: The Ballooning Revival in Nineteenth-Century France" (MIT Press, 2025)

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On August 27, 1783, a large crowd gathered in Paris to watch the first ascent of a hydrogen balloon. Despite the initial feverish enthusiasm, by the m...

Julie Singer, "Out of the Mouths of Babes: Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

14 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A wide-ranging study of the rich questions raised by speaking infants in medieval French literature.Medieval literature is full of strange moments whe...

Elise Franklin "Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the Welfare State in France" (University of Nebraska Press, 2024)

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Elise Franklin whose first book, Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the...

Selda Altan, "Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway" (Stanford UP, 2024)

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chinese workers helped build the modern world. They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the constructi...

William Jennings, "Dibia's World: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation" (Liverpool UP, 2023)

10 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the Universi...

Marc Jaffré, "The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610-1643" (Oxford UP, 2025)

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marc Jaffré joins Jana Byars for a lively conversation about The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610- 1643 (Oxford University Press, 2025)...

"I have not Finished...": Rokahya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist an...

Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-...

Max Hastings, “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975” (Harper, 2018)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

People of various political stripes in many countries (particularly those countries where various political stripes are allowed) have been arguing abo...

Les Sosnowski and Monique Sosnowski, "Operation Crevette: Benin, Mercenaries, and the Survival of a New State" (Lexington Books, 2024)

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Freshly out from under French colonial rule in 1960, the West African nation of Dahomey (now Benin) became home to the largest number of coups d’ét...

Benjamin P. Davis, "Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Benjamin P. Davis’s Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics (Edinburgh University Press 2025) provides one of t...

Bruce L. Vernarde, "The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France" (Cornell UP, 2024)

27 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Murder in a cathedral, horrific illnesses and deformities, narrow escapes from injury and death, a vengeful dragon, a wandering eyeball, a bawdy monk ...

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, "The Age of Revolutions: And the Generations Who Made It" (Basic Books, 2024)

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A panoramic new history of the revolutionary decades between 1760 and 1825, from North America and Europe to Haiti and Spanish America, showing how pr...

Holly Grout, "Playing Cleopatra: Inventing the Female Celebrity in Third Republic France" (LSU Press, 2024)

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Questions about the meaning of womanhood and femininity loomed large in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French culture. In Playing Cleop...

Andrew Janiak, "The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2024)

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2024) introduces the work and legacy ...

Kirsten L. Scheid, "Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920–1950" (Indiana UP, 2022)

09 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920–1950 (Indiana UP, 2022), Kirsten L. Scheid offers a striking study of both modern art i...

Ethan Kleinberg, "Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought" (Stanford UP, 2021)

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this rich intellectual history of the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic lectures in Paris, Ethan Kleinberg addresses Levinas's ...

Isabel Moreira, "Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint" (Oxford UP, 2024)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in...

Deborah Reed-Donahay, "Sideways Migration: Being French in London" (Routledge, 2025)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sideways Migration: Being French in London (Routledge, 2025) examines the relationship between migration and socioeconomic status. In particular, it ...

Alcohol

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Nina Studer tells us about alcohol. The restrictions and prohibitions, medical and moral discourses surrounding alcoho...

Florence Martin, "Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

25 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Farida Benlyazid and Moroccan Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) unfolds and analyzes the work of Moroccan director, producer, and scriptwriter Farid...

Trevor Wilson, "Alexandre Kojève and the Specters of Russian Philosophy" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

15 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Trevor Wilson about his new book, Alexandre Kojève and the Specters of Russian Philosophy (Northwestern Unive...

Erika Graham-Goering et al., "Lordship and the Decentralised State in Late Medieval Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jana Byars talks to Erika Graham-Goering of the University of Oslo about Lordship and the Decentralized State in Late Medieval Europe (Oxford Univer...