New Books in French Studies
528 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★ - 15 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of France about their New Books
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Episodes
Jasmine Calver, "Anti-Fascism, Gender, and International Communism: The Comité Mondial Des Femmes Contre la Guerre et Le Fascisme, 1934-1941" (Routledge, 2022)
December 05, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourWomen played an essential role in the international struggle against fascism during the interwar period, though their work has been neglected in broader historiography. In Anti-Fascism, Gender, and International Communism (Routledge, 2022), Jasmine Calver provides a comprehensive history of the Comité mondial des femmes contre la guerre et le fascisme (the International Committee of Women Against War and Fascism, or CMF), an international women's organization concerned with confronting the im...
Cathy McClive, "The Art of Childbirth: A Seventeenth-Century Midwife's Epistolary Treatise to Doctor Vallant" (Iter Press, 2022)
December 05, 2022 09:00 - 54 minutesCathy McClive (Florida State University) offers the first full-length bilingual edition of an extraordinary treatise on childbirth written by a seventeenth-century French midwife in The Art of Childbirth: A Seventeenth-Century Midwife's Epistolary Treatise to Doctor Vallant (University of Toronto Press, 2022). In 1671, Marie Baudoin (1625-1700), head midwife and governor of the Hôtel-Dieu of Clermont-Ferrand, sent a treatise on the art of childbirth to her powerful Parisian patron, Dr. Vallan...
Burleigh Hendrickson, "Decolonizing 1968: Transnational Student Activism in Tunis, Paris, and Dakar" (Cornell UP, 2022)
December 03, 2022 09:00 - 55 minutesDecolonizing 1968: Transnational Student Activism in Tunis, Paris, and Dakar (Cornell UP, 2022) explores how activists in 1968 transformed university campuses across Europe and North Africa into sites of contestation where students, administrators, and state officials collided over definitions of modernity and nationhood after empire. Burleigh Hendrickson details protesters' versions of events to counterbalance more visible narratives that emerged from state-controlled media centers and ulti...
Jonathan R. Hunt, "The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam" (Stanford UP, 2022)
December 01, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourThe Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam (Stanford UP, 2022) reveals how a coalition of powerful and developing states embraced global governance in hopes of a bright and peaceful tomorrow. While fears of nuclear war were ever-present, it was the perceived threat to their preeminence that drove Washington, Moscow, and London to throw their weight behind the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) banishing nuclear testing underground, the 1967 Treaty ...
Trevor Jackson, "Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
November 30, 2022 09:00 - 1 hourWhose fault are financial crises, and who is responsible for stopping them, or repairing the damage? Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) develops a new approach to the history of capitalism and inequality by using the concept of impunity to show how financial crises stopped being crimes and became natural disasters. Dr. Trevor Jackson examines the legal regulation of capital markets in a period of unprecedented exp...
On Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth"
November 29, 2022 09:00 - 34 minutesIn 1925, on the French occupied island of Martinique, one of the most prominent voices in post colonial theory was born, Frantz Fanon. He was born to parents of both African and French descent, and was brought up in the ways of French culture. For most of Fanon’s life, he identified with French nationality. He even fought for France in WWII. But despite his initial loyalty to France, the French colonizers didn’t see Fanon as equal. In his early adulthood, Fanon began to see colonialism for wh...
Jennifer Eun-Jung Row, "Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
November 28, 2022 09:00 - 49 minutesIn a pathbreaking new book, today’s guest, Jennifer Eun-Jung Row, asks how delay and haste in early modern French theater subverts the temporality of heteronormative politics and sexuality. Professor Row is the author of Queer Velocities: Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage, published by Northwestern University Press in 2022. A Professor of French at the University of Minnesota, Professor Row serves as the co-chair of the Arts and Design and Humanities Imagine for the project "D...
Frans Camphuijsen, "Scripting Justice in Late Medieval Europe: Legal Practice and Communication in the Law Courts of Utrecht, York and Paris" (Amsterdam UP, 2022)
November 23, 2022 09:00 - 51 minutesFrans Camphuijsen explored records from the law courts of York, Paris, and Utrecht and used them as a base for Scripting Justice in Late Medieval Europe: Legal Practice and Communication in the Law Courts of Utrecht, York, and Paris (Amsterdam University Press, 2022). Late medieval societies witnessed the emergence of a particular form of socio-legal practice and logic, focused on the law court and its legal process. In a context of legal pluralism, courts tried to carve out their own positio...
On Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish"
November 22, 2022 09:23 - 38 minutesWe moderns often tell ourselves a story that goes something like this: The past was barbaric, especially when it came to punishing criminals or persecuting minorities. Legal punishment used to include hanging, chopping off a head, burning at the stake, quartering, stoning, drowning, and crushing. Eventually, we tell ourselves, we learned to be more humane. But the 20th century French philosopher Michel Foucault didn’t believe this story modern people told themselves. He didn’t accept that mod...
Mary Dunn, "Where Paralytics Walk and the Blind See: Stories of Sickness and Disability at the Juncture of Worlds" (Princeton UP, 2022)
November 17, 2022 09:00 - 55 minutesIn our age of biomedicine, society often treats sickness and disability as problems in need of solution. Phenomena of embodied difference, however, have not always been seen in terms of lack and loss. Where Paralytics Walk and the Blind See: Stories of Sickness and Disability at the Juncture of Worlds (Princeton UP, 2022) explores the case of early modern Catholic Canada under French rule and shows it to be a period rich with alternative understandings of infirmity, disease, and death. Counte...
Ethnonationalism since 1973: A Discussion with Quinn Slobodian
November 17, 2022 09:00 - 46 minutesWhat’s the relationship between immigration, globalization and demographics? And what is woke particularism? John and Elizabeth turn for answers to Quinn Slobodian, professor of history at Wellesley College and author, most recently, of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. In a 2019 discussion that proves eerily prescient of politics in 2022, first discuss Jean Raspail‘s racist 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints, a book whose popularity in certain quarters since its pu...
Michael A. Hunzeker, "Dying to Learn: Wartime Lessons from the Western Front" (Cornell UP, 2021)
November 16, 2022 09:00 - 34 minutesIn Dying to Learn: Wartime Lessons from the Western Front (Cornell UP, 2021), Michael Hunzeker develops a novel theory to explain how wartime militaries learn. He focuses on the Western Front, which witnessed three great-power armies struggle to cope with deadlock throughout the First World War, as the British, French, and German armies all pursued the same solutions-assault tactics, combined arms, and elastic defense in depth. By the end of the war, only the German army managed to develop an...
On Aimé Césaire's "Discourse on Colonialism"
November 14, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutesAimé Césaire was born in 1913 on the island of Martinique, which was colonized by the French in the 1600s. He received a scholarship to complete his education in Paris, and by 1935, he’d fallen in with a crowd of brilliant scholars, intellectuals, and activists through his studies. In 1944, Césaire gave a series of lectures in Haiti, inspiring his students to organize a massive strike a few years later. In 1946, he negotiated the transformation of Martinique from a colony of France into a Dep...
William Doyle, "Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution" (Reaktion Books, 2022)
November 10, 2022 09:00 - 19 minutesThe 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 William Doyle describes how he did so, beginning with the three large issues that had destabilized revolutionary France: war, religion, and monarchy. Doyle shows how, as First Consul of the Republic, Napoleon resolved these issues: first by winning the war, then by forging peace with the Church, and finally by making himself a monarch. Napoleon at P...
Stephen G. Rabe, "The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy: A Story of Resistance, Courage, and Solidarity in a French Village" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
November 10, 2022 09:00 - 43 minutesThe fateful days and weeks surrounding 6 June 1944 have been extensively documented in histories of the Second World War, but less attention has been paid to the tremendous impact of these events on the populations nearby. The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy: A Story of Resistance, Courage, and Solidarity in a French Village (Cambridge UP, 2022) tells the inspiring yet heartbreaking story of ordinary people who did extraordinary things in defense of liberty and freedom. On D-Day, when transpor...
4.5 The Best Error You Can Make: Brent Hayes Edwards and Jean-Baptiste Naudy on Claude McKay
November 03, 2022 08:00 - 49 minutesWhat can a French translator do with a novelist who writes brilliantly about the “confrontation between Englishes?” How can such a confrontation be made legible across the boundaries of language, nation, and history? Renowned scholar and translator Brent Hayes Edwards sits down with publisher and translator Jean-Baptiste Naudy to consider these questions in a wide-ranging discussion about translating the Jamaican American writer Claude McKay. They focus especially on the recent translation in...
On Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract"
November 03, 2022 08:00 - 36 minutesThe 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that humans are born good, but society corrupts them. He was unimpressed with the fixation on wealth that he saw in the French society. In fact, he felt it was evidence of a self-interested, degenerate society. He endeavored to write the formula for a more civically minded society, and in 1762, he published The Social Contract, a treatise in which he argues that the people should run the government. Harvard Professor James Kloppenberg ...
On Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex"
October 25, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutesIn her diary, Simone de Beauvoir once wrote “I did not think of myself as a 'woman.' I was me.” Then, in 1949, de Beauvoir published The Second Sex, laying bare the widely accepted gender inequalities of her time and questioning the idea of man as “universal.” Her book incited both outrage and inspiration, and her ideas were quickly adapted by the Second-wave feminist movement. Although feminist ideas have changed over time, de Beauvoir’s vision of a just and equal society in which men and wo...
Thomas E. Burman et al., "The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650" (U California Press, 2022)
October 21, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourThe Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650 (U California Press, 2022) presents an original and revisionist narrative of the development of the medieval west from late antiquity to the dawn of modernity. This textbook is uniquely centered on the Mediterranean and emphasizes the role played by peoples and cultures of Africa, Asia, and Europe in an age when Christians, Muslims, and Jews of various denominations engaged with each other in both conflict and collaboration. Key feature...
Tracy Adams and Christine Adams, "The Creation of the French Royal Mistress: From Agnès Sorel to Madame Du Barry" (Penn State UP, 2020)
October 21, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourKings throughout medieval and early modern Europe had extraconjugal sexual partners. Only in France, however, did the royal mistress become a quasi-institutionalized political position. This study explores the emergence and development of the position of French royal mistress through detailed portraits of nine of its most significant incumbents: Agnès Sorel, Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Diane de Poitiers, Gabrielle d’Estrées, Françoise Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Françoise Athénaïs de Rochecho...
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism" (U California Press, 2021)
October 20, 2022 08:00 - 58 minutesIn this age of globalization, the eighteenth-century priest and abolitionist Henri Grégoire have often been called a man ahead of his time. An icon of anti-racism, a hero to people from Ho Chi Minh to French Jews, Grégoire has been particularly celebrated since 1989, when the French government placed him in the Pantheon as a model of ideals of universalism and human rights. In The Abbe Gregoire and the French Revolution: The Making of Modern Universalism (U California Press, 2021), we gain a...
Robyn D'Avignon, "A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa" (Duke UP, 2022)
October 10, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa (Duke University Press, 2022), Robyn d’Avignon, Assistant Professor of History at NYU, retraces the history of gold mining and orpaillage along the geological formation known as the West African Birimian Greenstone Belt. D’Avignon proposes the expression “ritual geology” to refer to “a set of practices, prohibitions, and cosmological engagements with the earth”, which has both endured until today among local miners an...
Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla, "Africa's Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story" (Pluto Press, 2021)
October 07, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourColonialism persists in many African countries due to the continuation of imperial monetary policy. Africa's Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story (Pluto Press, 2021) by Fanny Pigeaud and Dr. Ndongo Samba Sylla is the little-known account of the CFA Franc and economic imperialism. The CFA Franc was created in 1945, binding fourteen African states and split into two monetary zones. Why did French colonial authorities create it and how does it work? Why was independence not extended to mo...
Ian Macpherson McCulloch, "John Bradstreet's Raid 1758: A Riverine Operation in the French and Indian War" (U Oklahoma Press, 2022)
October 05, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourA year after John Bradstreet’s raid of 1758—the first and largest British-American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War)—Benjamin Franklin hailed it as one of the great “American” victories of the war. Bradstreet heartily agreed, and soon enough, his own official account was adopted by Francis Parkman and other early historians. In John Bradstreet's Raid 1758: A Riverine Operation in the French and Indian War (U Oklahoma Press,...
F. R. Scott’s Journal of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism
October 05, 2022 08:00 - 38 minutesGreg Marchildon interviews Graham Fraser who edited F. R. Scott’s journal that he kept while he was a member of the Royal Commission on Bilinguiism and Biculturalism–the famous Bi and Bi Commission. The book is entitled The Fate of Canada: F. R. Scott’s Journal of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, 1963-1971 (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2021). The journal sheds considerable light on the intellectual journey of the Commission and the content of its interim and final reports. Graham...
Christopher Goscha, "The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" (Princeton UP, 2022)
October 03, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourThe Vietnamese victory over the French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which ended almost a century of French colonial rule in Indochina, is one of the most famous events in the history of anticolonialism. How were the Vietnamese communists able to achieve this remarkable victory over a much more powerful colonial force? This is the question Chris Goscha seeks to answer in his new book, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam (Princeton UP, 2022). In doing so, Gosch...
Emily Joan Ward, "Royal Childhood and Child Kingship: Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
September 30, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourRoyal Childhood and Child Kingship: Boy Kings in England, Scotland, France and Germany, c. 1050–1262 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) refines adult-focused perspectives on medieval rulership. Dr. Emily Joan Ward exposes the problematic nature of working from the assumption that kingship equated to adult power. Children's participation and political assent could be important facets of the day-to-day activities of rule, as this study shows through an examination of royal charters, oaths to yo...
On Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables"
September 27, 2022 08:00 - 28 minutesOver 150 years later, Les Miserables is a story that still resonates with readers and audiences around the world. The story highlighted the unjust social class system of 19th century France by moving the underrepresented lives of the poor and miserable to center stage. But this wasn’t something unique to France. It was, and still is, a global issue. Victor Hugo knew this story had worldwide relevance and he wanted it to be accessible to all readers. Professor David Bellos is a Professor of Fr...
Charles Devellenes, "Positive Atheism: Bayle, Meslier, D'Holbach, Diderot" (Edinburgh UP, 2021)
September 23, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn Positive Atheism: Bayle, Meslier, d’Holbach, Diderot (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), Dr. Charles Devellennes looks at the religious, social, and political thought of the first four thinkers of the French Enlightenment: Pierre Bayle, Jean Meslier, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and Denis Diderot to explicitly argue for atheism as a positive philosophy. He shows how atheism evolved considerably over the century that spans the works of these four authors: from the possibility of the virtuous ...
Thomas Dodman, "What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion" (U Chicago Press, 2018)
September 22, 2022 19:00 - 1 hourFeelings have a history and nostalgia has its own. In What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion(University of Chicago Press, 2018) Thomas Dodman explores the history of nostalgia from the late seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. Beginning with the coining of the term by a young Swiss medical student in 1688, the book tracks the development of nostalgia as a diagnosis with a specific military medical history. Never exclusive to the French context, the disease ga...
Olivier Zunz, "The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville" (Princeton UP, 2022)
September 21, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn 1831, at the age of twenty-five, Alexis de Tocqueville made his fateful journey to America, where he observed the thrilling reality of a functioning democracy. From that moment onward, the French aristocrat would dedicate his life as a writer and politician to ending despotism in his country and bringing it into a new age. In this authoritative and groundbreaking biography, leading Tocqueville expert Olivier Zunz tells the story of a radical thinker who, uniquely charged by the events of h...
Máté Rigó, "Capitalism in Chaos: How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
September 20, 2022 08:00 - 59 minutesCapitalism in Chaos: How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War (Cornell UP, 2022) explores an often-overlooked consequence and paradox of the First World War—the prosperity of business elites and bankers in service of the war effort during the destruction of capital and wealth by belligerent armies. This study of business life amid war and massive geopolitical changes follows industrialists and policymakers in Central Europe as the region became crucially importa...
On Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions"
September 15, 2022 08:00 - 34 minutesJean-Jacques Rousseau led an interesting life. He was a philosopher, writer, and music composer in the 18th century. Rousseau believed that society has an enormous influence on human development and behavior. In his later years, he wrote a detailed account of his life to help explain how his own experiences shaped his personality, views, neuroses, and imperfections. This autobiography was called Confessions. Professor David Avrom Bell is a professor of History at Princeton University. He focu...
Carl A. Brasseaux and Donald W. Davis, "Asian-Cajun Fusion: Shrimp from the Bay to the Bayou" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)
September 13, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourShrimp is easily America’s favorite seafood, but its very popularity is the wellspring of problems that threaten the shrimp industry’s existence. Asian-Cajun Fusion: Shrimp from the Bay to the Bayou (University of Mississippi Press, 2022) by Carl A. Brasseaux and Donald W. Davis provides insightful analysis of this paradox and a detailed, thorough history of the industry in Louisiana. Dried shrimp technology was part of the cultural heritage Pearl River Chinese immigrants introduced into the ...
Joanne Watson, "Empress Eugenie: A Footnote History, 1826-1920" (Grosvenor House, 2022)
September 12, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourEmpress Eugenie: A Footnote History, 1826-1920 (Grosvenor House, 2022) is the story of the glamorous French Empress who escaped from a vengeful mob in 1870 and spent the next fifty years in exile in England. With a broad brush approach to the political events, it shows her life and times from a different angle, exploring subjects often relegated to mere footnotes. Aided by the increased digitalization of sources which produced many new and interesting discoveries, the book features 53 images ...
Elizabeth Andrews Bond, "The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France" (Cornell UP, 2021)
September 12, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourInspired by the reading and writing habits of citizens leading up to the French Revolution, The Writing Public: Participatory Knowledge Production in Enlightenment and Revolutionary France (Cornell UP, 2021) is a compelling addition to the long-running debate about the link between the Enlightenment and the political struggle that followed. Dr. Elizabeth Andrews Bond diligently scoured France's local newspapers spanning the two decades prior to the Revolution as well as its first three years ...
Josep M. Fradera, "The Imperial Nation: Citizens and Subjects in the British, French, Spanish, and American Empires" (Princeton UP, 2018)
September 09, 2022 08:00 - 55 minutesHow the legacy of monarchical empires shaped Britain, France, Spain, and the United States as they became liberal entities? Historians view the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a turning point when imperial monarchies collapsed and modern nations emerged. Treating this pivotal moment as a bridge rather than a break, Josep Fradera's The Imperial Nation: Citizens and Subjects in the British, French, Spanish, and American Empires (Princeton University Press, 2018) offers a sweep...
Paul A. Silverstein, "Postcolonial France: The Question of Race and the Future of the Republic" (Pluto Press, 2018)
September 02, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourFrance is a bellwether for the postcolonial anxieties and populist politics emerging across the world today. Postcolonial France: The Question of Race and the Future of the Republic (Pluto Press, 2018) explores the dynamics and dilemmas of the present moment of crisis and hope in France, through an exploration of recent moral panics. Taking stock of the tensions as they have emerged over the last quarter of a century, Paul Silverstein looks at urban racial violence, female Islamic dress and m...
On "Encyclopédie"
September 02, 2022 08:00 - 25 minutesOne of the earliest modern encyclopedias was printed in France in the 18th century. Unlike many encyclopedias that came before it, this text was written in French instead of Latin, which was the language of the elite. Its authors aimed to compile all the knowledge in the world. They were also trying to disseminate that knowledge to the general public. James Engell is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He has directed dissertations in American Studies and ...
Meighen McCrae, "Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War: The Supreme War Council and War Planning, 1917-1918" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
September 01, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWhen the Germans requested an armistice in October 1918, it was a shock to the Allied political and military leadership. They had been expecting, and planning for, the war to continue into 1919, the year they hoped to achieve a complete military victory over the Central Powers. In Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War: The Supreme War Council and War Planning, 1917-1918" (Cambridge UP, 2019), Meighen McCrae illuminates how, throughout this planning process, the Supreme War Co...
Philipp Felsch, "The Summer of Theory: History of a Rebellion, 1960-1990" (Polity Press, 2021)
September 01, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour'Theory' - a magical glow has emanated from this word since the sixties. Theory was more than just a succession of ideas: it was an article of faith, a claim to truth, a lifestyle. It spread among its adherents in cheap paperbacks and triggered heated debates in seminar rooms and cafés. The Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Adorno, Derrida, Foucault: these and others were the exotic schools and thinkers whose ideas were being devoured by young minds. But where did the fasci...
Amy Edwards, "Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain" (U California Press, 2022)
August 31, 2022 08:00 - 56 minutesIn this podcast, Amy Edwards, author of Are We Rich Yet?: The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain (U California Press, 2022), provides a fascinating journey into her own research and how she built a picture of a key moment of the 20th century. As a result, she brings together different strands of work such as cultural, business, economic and financial history. The book and podcast will be of interest to anyone old enough to remember the 1980s or whose current life has been...
The Future of the European Union: A Discussion with Luuk van Middelaar
August 30, 2022 08:00 - 48 minutesThe Brexit debate has been so all-consuming and filled with so much misinformation that many Brits and others can overlook some the challenges facing the European Union itself. Looked at in broad terms, it has been an astonishingly successful political project, having delivered 70 years of peace and prosperity. But what lies ahead? What issues does it need to tackle to maintain that kind of success? Luuk van Middelaar is a Dutch historian, Professor of EU law at Leiden University. He has work...
Carolyn J. Eichner, "Feminism's Empire" (Cornell UP, 2022)
August 10, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourFeminism's Empire (Cornell UP, 2022) investigates the complex relationships between imperialisms and feminisms in the late nineteenth century and demonstrates the challenge of conceptualizing "pro-imperialist" and "anti-imperialist" as binary positions. By intellectually and spatially tracing the era's first French feminists' engagement with empire, Carolyn J. Eichner explores how feminists opposed—yet employed—approaches to empire in writing, speaking, and publishing. In differing ways, they...
Sébastien Philippe and Tomas Statius, "Toxique: Enquête sur les essais nucléaires français en Polynésie" (Companyédition PUF/Disclose, 2021)
August 08, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourWhat happens when you bring together an important collection of previously secret archival documents dealing with France's nuclear detonations in the Pacific from 1966 to 1996, a nuclear scientist, and an investigative journalist? Working together beginning in early 2020, Sébastien Philippe and Tomas Statius, the authors of Toxique: Enquête sur les essais nucléaires français en Polynésie (Presses universitaires de France and Disclose, 2021) have now shared with readers the meaningful and prov...
Itay Lotem, "The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021)
August 05, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourIn The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021), Itay Lotem explores the remembering of empire in Britain and France. By comparing these two former colonial powers, the author tells two distinct stories about coming to terms with the legacies of colonialism, the role of silence and the breaking thereof. Focusing on memory as an ongoing, politicized public debate, the book examines the afterlife of colonial history as an element of political a...
Nina Rattner Gelbart, "Minerva's French Sisters: Women of Science in Enlightenment France" (Yale UP, 2021)
August 04, 2022 08:00 - 54 minutesIn Minerva’s French Sisters: Women of Science in Enlightenment France (Yale University Press, 2021), Nina Gelbart, Professor of History and Anita Johnson Wand Professor of Women’s Studies at Occidental College, shares the stories of six, incredibly resourceful, and dedicated women who contributed substantially to the sciences of their time. While offering valuable comments on the challenges of writing gender-inclusive histories of science, the book restores the legacies of the mathematician E...
Emily O. Wittman, "Interwar Itineraries: Authenticity in Anglophone and French Travel Writing" (Amherst College Press, 2022)
August 03, 2022 07:00 - 1 hourHow people traveled, and how people wrote about travel, changed in the interwar years. Novel technologies eased travel conditions, breeding new iterations of the colonizing gaze. The sense that another war was coming lent urgency and anxiety to the search for new places and "authentic" experiences. In Interwar Itineraries: Authenticity in Anglophone and French Travel Writing (Amherst College Press, 2022), Emily O. Wittman identifies a diverse group of writers from two languages who embarked o...
On Jules Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days"
August 02, 2022 08:00 - 26 minutesWhen French author Jules Verne wrote Around the World in 80 Days in the late 1800s, scheduled global travel was practically science fiction, and 80 days seemed impossibly fast. But his techno-futurist novel inspired everyday adventurers to traverse the globe by boat, train, bike, and foot—and beat his protagonist’s record. Harvard professor Joyce Chaplin discusses what we can learn from Jules Verne’s classic novel. Joyce Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History...
Christy Pichichero, "The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon" (Cornell UP, 2018)
July 29, 2022 08:00 - 1 hourCovering the pivotal period from the mid-seventeenth century through the era of the French Revolution, Christy Pichichero's The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon (Cornell University Press, 2018; paperback ed. 2020) is a fascinating interdisciplinary study that pushes us to rethink our ideas about both the military and the Enlightenment in and beyond a France that was a global, as well as a continental European imperial power. As Pichichero...