New Books in French Studies
Episodes
Todd Shepard, "Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962-1979" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
18 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Departing from the bold and compelling claim that we cannot fully understand the histories of decolonization and the so-called “sexual revolution”...
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020)
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. How...
Great Books: Catherine Stimpson on de Beauvior's "The Second Sex"
28 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"Woman is not born but made." This is only one of the powerful sentences in Simone de Beauvoir’s magisterial The Second Sex (1949). It means that th...
Jessica Lynne Pearson, "The Colonial Politics of Global Health: France and the United Nations in Postwar Africa" (Harvard UP, 2018)
15 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
International organizations throw up several obstacles—their immense scale, their dry bureaucratic language—to the historian trying to piece toget...
Sarah Wobick-Segev, "Homes Away from Home: Jewish Belonging in 20th-Century Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg" (Stanford UP, 2018)
09 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In pre-emancipation Europe, most Jews followed Jewish law most of the time, but by the turn of the twentieth century, a new secular Jewish identity ha...
Andrew Israel Ross, "Public City/Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris" (Temple UP, 2019)
31 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his provocative new book, Public City/Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution, and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Temple University Pre...
Gillian Glaes, "African Political Activism in Postcolonial France: State Surveillance and Social Welfare" (Routledge, 2018)
31 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Gillian Glaes’s African Political Activism in Postcolonial France: State Surveillance and Social Welfare (Routledge, 2018) examines the experiences ...
The Treaty of Versailles One Hundred Years On
27 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Versailles Treaty of 1919, celebrates its one-hundred anniversary this year. And, yet unlike the more recent centenaries, such as that of the outb...
Céline Carayon, "Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas" (UNC Press, 2019)
12 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Taking a fresh look at the first two centuries of French colonialism in the Americas, Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and In...
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019)
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, i...
Caroline Weber, “Proust’s Duchess” (Knopf, 2019)
27 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“My greatest adventure was undoubtedly Proust. What is there left to write after that?” This is what Virginia Woolf said, full of admiration -- an...
Claire Edington, "Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam" (Cornell UP, 2019)
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Both colonies and insane asylums are well known institutions of power. But what of asylums in Europe’s early 20th-century colonial empires? How did ...
Annabel L. Kim, "Unbecoming Language: Anti-Identitarian French Feminist Fictions" (Ohio State UP, 2018)
06 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Unbecoming Language: Anti-Identitarian French Feminist Fictions (The Ohio State University Press, 2018), Annabel Kim tangles with the question of d...
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing
03 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trad...
Julia Nicholls, "Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune, 1871-1885" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Revolutionary Thought after the Paris Commune, 1871-1885 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), is the first comprehensive account of French revolutiona...
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude t...
Catherine Clark, "Paris and the Cliché of History: The City in Photographs, 1860-1970" (Oxford UP, 2018)
18 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the first image that comes to mind when you hear the words “Paris” and “photography”? Is it a famous photo, perhaps an Atget, Brassai...
Michitake Aso, "Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975" (UNC Press, 2018)
11 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How can the history of rubber be used as a way to understand the history of 20th-century Vietnam? In this episode of New Books in History, Michael G. ...
Cécile Vidal, "Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society" (UNC Press, 2019)
08 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Combining Atlantic and imperial perspectives,Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society (University of North Carolina Pres...
Kate Kirkpatrick, "Becoming Beauvoir: A Life" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)
10 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Kirkpatrick a lecturer in Religion, Philosophy and Culture at King’s College London and author of Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (Bloomsbury Academi...
Katie Jarvis, "Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France" (Oxford UP, 2019)
04 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The king’s guards became increasingly nervous as they watched nearly 7,000 individuals march on Versailles on October 5, 1789. The crowd approaching...
Susan Jaques, "The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire" (Pegasus Books, 2018)
22 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her book, The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire (Pegasus Books, 2018), Susan Jaques off...
Lisa Greenwald, "Daughters of 1968: Redefining French Feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement" (U Nebraska Press, 2019)
15 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
May ’68 marked a watershed moment in French society, culture, and political life. The feminist movement was no exception. Women took to the streets ...
Stephen Alan Bourque, "Beyond the Beach: The Allied War Against France" (Naval Institute Press, 2018)
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Did the Allied bombing plan for the liberation of France follow a carefully orchestrated plan, or was it executed on an ad-hoc basis with little conce...
Erin-Marie Legacey, "Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830" (Cornell UP, 2019)
07 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830 (Cornell University Press, 2019), Dr. Erin-Marie Legacey,...
David Stenner, "Globalizing Morocco: Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State" (Stanford UP, 2019)
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The story of Morocco’s independence struggle against France and Spain is a complicated one. Because it occurred around the same time of the long-run...
Stijn Vanheule, Derek Hook and Calum Neill, "Reading Lacan’s Écrits" (Routledge, 2018)
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Lacan published his Écrits in 1966, a compilation of his written work up to that middle period in his teaching. Notoriously difficult to read, the ed...
Donald Reid, "Opening the Gates: The Lip Affair, 1968-1981" (Verso Books, 2018)
11 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1973, Donald Reid was an undergraduate student who had traveled to France for the first time to work on his Honors thesis in History....
Joan Wallach Scott, "Sex and Secularism" (Princeton UP, 2017)
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Joan Wallach Scott’s contributions to the history of women and gender, and to feminist theory, will be familiar to listeners across multiple discipl...
Stacy Fahrenthold, "Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925" (Oxford UP, 2019)
19 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In her debut book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925 (Oxford University Press, ...
David Green, "The Hundred Years War: A People’s History" (Yale UP, 2014)
19 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The year 1453 marked the end of an intermittent yet seemingly endless series of wars between the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of England that, so...
Francesca Trivellato, "The Promise and Peril of Credit" (Princeton UP, 2019)
07 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1647, the French author Étienne Cleirac asserted in his book Les us, et coustumes de la mer that the credit instruments known as bills of exchange...
Cathal J. Nolan, "The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost" (Oxford UP, 2019)
06 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could...
Jeremy Black, "The World at War, 1914-1945" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In one of his latest books, The World at War, 1914-1945 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Professor of History at Exeter University, Jeremy Black, the mos...
Marixa Lasso, "Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal" (Harvard UP, 2019)
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Many of our presumptions about the Panama Canal Zone are wrong; it was not carved out of uninhabited jungle, the creation of Lake Gatún did not flood...
Harold J. Cook, "The Young Descartes: Nobility, Rumor, and War" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Harold J. Cook talks about the travels and trials of the young Descartes, a man who spent as much time traveling and fighting as he did studying philo...
René Weis, "The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Duplessis" (Oxford UP, 2015)
22 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Though she died in 1847 at a young age, Marie Duplessis inspired one of the greatest operas ever composed. In The Real Traviata: The Song of Marie Dup...
Kathleen Keller, "Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa" (U Nebraska Press, 2018)
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kathleen Keller’s new book, Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africa (University of Nebraska...
Stéphane Henaut and Jeni Mitchell, "A Bite-Sized History of France: Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War, and Enlightenment" (The New Press, 2018)
25 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
From the cassoulet that won a war to the crêpe that doomed Napoleon, from the rebellions sparked by bread and salt to the new cuisines forged by empi...
Anne Cheng, "Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface" (Oxford UP, 2017)
25 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Anne Cheng (she/hers)--Pr...
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...
Andrew Sobanet, "Generation Stalin: French Writers, the Fatherland, and the Cult of Personality" (Indiana UP, 2018)
14 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his 1924 biography of Mahatma Gandhi, writer Romain Rolland embraced the Gandhian philosophy of non-violence and decried the “dictators of Moscow...
Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
26 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approac...
Alexandre Kojève, "Atheism," trans by Jeff Love (Columbia UP, 2018)
25 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Columbia University press has just released a new translation of a work by philosopher Alexandre Kojève, simply titled Atheism, translated by Profess...
Stefanos Geroulanos, "Transparency in Postwar France: A Critical History of the Present" (Stanford UP, 2017)
12 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to do a “microhistory” of a concept? Stefanos Geroulanos pursues just such a project in the 22 chapters of Transparency in Postw...
Sun-Young Park, "Ideals of the Body: Architecture, Urbanism, and Hygiene in Postrevolutionary Paris" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018)
01 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We know quite a bit about the physical signatures of urban “modernity” foisted upon Paris by Baron Haussmann in the late nineteenth century — th...
Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, "Suez Deconstructed: An Interactive Study in Crisis, War, and Peacemaking" (Brookings Institution, 2018)
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Experiencing a major crisis from different viewpoints, step by step: the Suez crisis of 1956— one of the major crises of the 1950s offers a potent...
Benoît Majerus, "From the Middle Ages to Today: Experiences and Representations of Madness in Paris" (Parigramme, 2018)
16 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With Paris as the organizing locus of his new book, Du moyen âge à nos jours, expériences et représentations de la folie à Paris [From the Middle...
Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)
16 Jan 2019
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...
Denis Provencher, "Queer Maghrebi French: Language, Temporalities, Transfiliations" (Liverpool UP, 2017)
04 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes a book can take inspiration from a (not so) simple map. At the end of his previous book, Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual C...
Andrew S. Curran, "Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely" (Other Press, 2019)
02 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Denis Diderot has long been regarded as one of the leading figures of the French Enlightenment, thanks to his editorship of the influential multi-volu...
Paola Bertucci, "Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France" (Yale UP, 2018)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Paola Bertucci's Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France (Yale University Press, 2018) is an innovative new look...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Danna Agmon, "A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conversion, and Scandal in French India" (Cornell UP, 2017)
28 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
People sometimes forget—if they are even aware—that France’s empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included a colonial presence in ...
Shannon Fogg, “Stealing Home: Looting, Restitution, and Reconstructing Jewish Lives in France, 1942-1947” (Oxford UP, 2017)
25 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While the history of the Second World War and Jewish persecution in France has been widely studied, the return of survivors in the aftermath of deport...
Patricia Lorcin and Todd Shepard, “French Mediterraneans: Transnational and Imperial Histories” (U Nebraska Press, 2016)
24 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Following a 2011 meeting of the annual Mediterranean Workshop at the University of Minnesota, Patricia Lorcin (a co-convener) approached Todd Shepard ...
Venus Bivar, “Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France” (UNC Press, 2018)
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Venus Bivar documents the de...
Hervé Guillemain, “Schizophrenics in the Twentieth Century: The Side Effects of History” (Alma, 2018)
09 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Schizophrènes au XXe siècle: des effets secondaires de l’histoire [Schizophrenics in the Twentieth Century: The Side Effects of History] is a stro...
Laila Amine, “Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of Intimacy in the City of Light” (U Wisconsin Press, 2018)
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the heart of Laila Amine’s book is a crucial question: where is Paris? This question may be surprising for anyone who can readily point to the Fr...
Ludivine Broch, “Ordinary Workers, Vichy and the Holocaust: French Railwaymen and the Second World War” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
06 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This spring and summer, the workers of the Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF) staged a series of rolling strikes, slowing and shu...
Jonathan Smyth, “Robespierre and the Festival of the Supreme Being: The Search for a Republican Morality” (Manchester UP, 2016)
05 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his speech delivered to the National Convention on 18 Floréal (May 7, 1794), Maximilien Robespierre shocked his listeners as he attacked the propo...
Richard S. Hopkins, “Planning the Greenspaces of Nineteenth-Century Paris” (LSU Press, 2015)
22 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the mid-1800s, Paris experienced an unprecedented growth in the development of parks, squares, and gardens. This greenspace was part of N...
The Invisible Committee, “Now” (Semiotext(e), 2017)
13 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What could the communism of the future be? In Now (Semiotext(e), 2017), The Invisible Committee explores our current crisis by thinking through key...
Darcie Fontaine, “Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Empire in France and Algeria” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
26 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What role did Christianity play in Algeria before, during, and after the war of independence? In Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Em...
Peter Sahlins, “1668: The Year of the Animal in France” (Zone Books, 2017)
19 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture ...
Laura Kalba, “Color in the Age of Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art” (Penn State UP, 2018)
14 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When you imagine the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, what colors do you see? Whatever comes to mind, Laura Kalba’s, Color in the Age of...
Bruno Chaouat, “Is Theory Good for the Jews?: French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemitism” (Liverpool University Press, 2017)
11 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“Is Theory Good for the Jews?” asks author Bruno Chaouat, professor of French at the University of Minnesota, in Is Theory Good for the Jews?: Fr...
Yoav Di-Capua, “No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre and Decolonization” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Yoav Di-Capua‘s new book, No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre and Decolonization (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is narrative intel...
Catherine Soussloff, “Foucault on Painting” (U Minnesota Press, 2017)
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Foucault on Painting (University of Minnesota Press, 2017), Catherine Soussloff discusses an area of Foucault’s development that has remained lar...
Kate Skinner, “The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland: Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914-2014” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her book, The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland: Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914-2014 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Kate Skinner...
Leah Bassel and Akwugo Emejulu, “Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain” (Policy Press, 2017)
27 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What is the impact of austerity on minority women? How has this impacted on already long standing forms of social inequality across England, France an...
Katelyn Knox, “Race on Display in Twentieth- and Twenty First-Century France” (Liverpool UP, 2016)
17 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Katelyn Knox’s book, Race on Display in Twentieth- and Twenty First–Century France (Liverpool University Press, 2016) examines francophone litera...
Kimberly A. Francis, “Teaching Stravinsky: Nadia Boulanger and the Consecration of a Modernist Icon” (Oxford UP, 2015)
11 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Pedagogue, composer, and conductor Nadia Boulanger was a central figure in Igor Stravinsky’s life during the middle part of his career, providing hi...
Sandra Ott, “Living with the Enemy: German Occupation, Collaboration and Justice in the West Pyrenees, 1940-1948” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
09 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Living with the Enemy: German Occupation, Collaboration and Justice in the West Pyrenees, 1940-1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2017...
Mehammed Mack, “Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture” (Fordham UP, 2017)
29 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the recent past, anti-Muslim hate crimes and rhetoric have surged across America and Europe. Much of this public discourse revolves around question...
Fareen Parvez, “Politicizing Islam: The Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford UP, 2017)
21 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Politicizing Islam: The Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford University Press, 2017) by Fareen Parvez is a rich ethnographic analysis of Islami...
Eric T. Jennings, “Escape from Vichy: The Refugee Exodus from the French Caribbean” (Harvard UP, 2018)
19 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Escape from Vichy: The Refugee Exodus to the French Caribbean (Harvard University Press, 2018), Eric T. Jennings reveals the fascinating history of...
Robert Darnton, “A Literary Tour de France: The World of Books on the Eve of the French Revolution” (Oxford UP, 2018)
15 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Five decades ago, a young scholar named Robert Darnton followed up on a footnote that took him to the archives of the “Typographical Society of Neuc...
Tatyana V. Bakhmetyeva, “Mother of the Church” (Northern Illinois UP, 2016)
14 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Mother of the Church: Sofia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France (Northern Illinois Univers...
David Narrett, “Adventurism and Empire” (UNC Press, 2015)
23 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book, Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803 (University of North Carolina Press,...
Jean Beaman, “Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France” (U California Press, 2017)
08 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be a citizen? Every country has its own legal codes that confer a set of rights on official members. But full citizenship is ofte...
Robert Foxcurran, “Songs Upon the Rivers” (Baraka Books, 2016)
07 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the American West as it is often told typically involves Spanish, British, and American Empires struggling with Indigenous people for con...
Marlene Daut, “Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism” (Palgrave, 2017)
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (Palgrave, 2017), Marlene Daut helps to resurrect the life and writings of one of Haiti’...
Claire Eldridge, “From Empire to Exile” (Manchester UP, 2016)
26 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The French-Algerian War that erupted in 1954 ended with the emergence of an independent Algeria in 1962, but it was not until decades later that a bro...
Jason Herbeck, “Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean” (Liverpool UP, 2017)
23 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What do gingerbread houses in Haiti teach us about the construction of identity in the French Caribbean? How do hurricanes and earthquakes reveal the ...
Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp, “Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France” (Liverpool UP, 2016)
18 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Connections between France and North Africa have long been shaped by colonialism, nationalism, and economics. This intercultural relationship has also...
Wolfgang Seibel, “Persecution and Rescue: The Politics of the Final Solution in France, 1940-1944” (U Michigan Press, 2017)
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his recent book, Persecution and Rescue: The Politics of the Final Solution in France, 1940-1944 (University of Michigan Press, 2017). Wolfgang Sei...
Sarah Fishman, “From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution: Gender and Family Life in Postwar France” (Oxford UP, 2017)
29 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In her latest book, From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution: Gender and Family Life in Postwar France (Oxford University Press, 2017), Sarah Fishman offer...
David Hopkin, “Voices of the People in Nineteenth-Century France” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
25 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The author of this book, David Hopkin, is Professor of European Social History at Hertford College, Oxford. He is also my brother. However, I’m not ...
Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll, “Minitel: Welcome to the Internet” (MIT Press, 2017)
21 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When discussing Internet history, many within the United States believe the creation myth of an Internet born in Silicon Valley. But aspects of the In...
Michel Leiris, “Phantom Africa” (Seagull Books, 2017)
20 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1931 and 1933, French writer Michel Leiris participated in a state-sponsored expedition to document the cultural practices of people in west a...
Christopher Church, “Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citizenship in the French Caribbean” (U. Nebraska Press, 2017)
18 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Hurricanes, fires, a volcano eruption: disasters are political, as Christopher Church argues. His new book, Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citize...
Kathryn Brown. ed., “Perspectives on Degas” (Routledge, 2016)
22 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Edgar Degas died in the fall of 1917. Marking this 100th anniversary, Kathryn Brown‘s edited collection, Perspectives on Degas (Routledge, 2016) bri...
Stuart Elden, “Foucault: The Birth of Power” (Polity Press, 2017)
06 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did Foucault become a public, political intellectual? In Foucault: The Birth of Power (Polity Press, 2017), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political T...
Regine Jean-Charles, “Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary” (OSU Press, 2014)
26 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Regine Jean-Charles’ Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Ohio State University Press, 2014) foregroun...
Andrew Smith, “Terror and Terroir: The Winegrowers of the Languedoc and Modern France” (Manchester University Press, 2016)
06 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew Smith‘s Terror and Terroir: The Winegrowers of the Languedoc and Modern France (Manchester University Press, 2016) is a political history of ...
Paige Bowers, “The General’s Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France” (Chicago Review Press, 2017)
19 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When Charles de Gaulle issued his famous call in June 1940 for the French people to continue fighting Nazi Germany, among those within Occupied France...
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, “Bricktop’s Paris: African American Women in Paris between the Two World Wars (SUNY Press, 2015)
26 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When Dorothy Sterling wrote her book about nineteenth-century black women in America, she stated in the introduction that the book was not a definitiv...
Lori Marso, “Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter” (Duke UP, 2017)
21 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Lori Marso’s new book, Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter (Duke University Press, 2017), delves into Simone de Beauvoir’s political ...
Maurice Samuels, “The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews” (U. Chicago Press, 2016)
14 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In The Right To Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Maurice Samuels, Betty Jane Anylan Professor of Fren...