New Books In French Studies

  • Author: Vários
  • Narrator: Vários
  • Publisher: Podcast
  • Duration: 613:58:40
  • More information

Informações:

Synopsis

Interviews with Scholars of France about their New Books

Episodes

  • Jennifer L. Palmer, “Intimate Bonds: Family and Slavery in the French Atlantic” (U. Pennsylvania Press, 2016)

    17/12/2016 Duration: 41min

    Jennifer Palmer’s new book, Intimate Bonds: Family and Slavery in the French Atlantic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), uses the stories of two extraordinary families as the point of departure for a study of the ways that household relationships, and the intimacy they entailed, shaped understandings of race, gender and slavery in the 18th century French Atlantic. Palmer analyzes the bonds of friendship, servitude, sex, and godparentage as they related to shifts in legal regimes regulating slavery. Her reliance on sources including correspondence and wills makes for rich storytelling about the complex lives of enslaved people and their owners, as both enabling and undermining of racial and gendered hierarchies.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • Kathryn Kleppinger, “Branding the Beur Author: Minority Writing and Media in France, 1983-2013” (Liverpool UP, 2015)

    12/11/2016 Duration: 01h56s

    Kathryn Kleppinger’s Branding the Beur Author: Minority Writing and the Media in France, 1983-2013 (Liverpool University Press, 2015) examines the “paradox of ethnic minority writing” in the work of multiple authors of North African descent over a thirty-year period. Organized chronologically as a series of portraits, the book’s chapters deal with the literary (and filmic) output of an impressive number of writers, including Mehdi Charef, Azouz Begag, Farida Belghoul, Soraya Nini, Samira Bellil, Rachid Djaidani,Faiza Guene, and Sabri Loutah. Considering literary works themselves, as well as the audio-visual media representation of texts and authors on French TV and radio, Kleppinger’s analysis pushes back against the tendency to understand “beur” literature in exclusively social and political terms at the expense of aesthetic or artistic readings. Drawing on a range of sources, from literature to television and radio archives, to interviews Kleppinger conducted with t

  • Caroline Ford, “Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France” (Harvard UP, 2016)

    12/09/2016 Duration: 54min

    Caroline Ford’s Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France (Harvard University Press, 2016) explores the roots of French environmental consciousness in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Far from being a product of the postwar environmental movement, Ford shows how French society began to understand how humans adversely affected their surroundings during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Popular writers like Francois-Antoine Rauch demonstrated how deforestation altered the climate and damaged the habitability of the nation. War, revolution, and a series of devastating floods brought the questions of deforestation, urbanization, and industrial capitalism into conflict with the finite resources of nature. Public worries over resource depletion and climate change mingled with a new bourgeois consciousness developing in the nineteenth century. France’s countryside became a place of romantic longing for families, a source of inspiration for artists, and an important s

  • Emile Chabal, “A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France” (Cambridge UP, 2015)

    24/08/2016 Duration: 01h10s

    Emile Chabal’s A Divided Republic: Nation, State and Citizenship in Contemporary France (Cambridge University Press, 2015) is an in-depth analysis of the languages and preoccupations of French civil society and political culture from the 1970s to the present. Picking up where many historical studies leave off, the book pursues the legacies of the period of France’s Trente Glorieuses, including a number of critical political shifts and turning points during the last four decades. A study focused on French elites, the book moves from consideration of the contributions of intellectuals, academics, and journalists, to the ways that changing ideas and vocabularies played out in the everyday life of French politics. Concerned with the broad consensual middle ground of French politics since the 1970s, the book is divided into two parts: the first examines French neo-republicanism in the wake of De Gaulle, while the second looks at a range of liberal critiques of the varieties of that republicanism. Seeki

  • Kieko Matteson, “Forests in Revolutionary France: Conservation, Community, and Conflict, 1669-1848” (Cambridge UP, 2015)

    03/08/2016 Duration: 52min

    Kieko Matteson’s Forests in Revolutionary France: Conservation, Community, and Conflict, 1669-1848 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) is an impressive study of the economic and political vitality of the forest, from the reign of Louis XIV through the middle of the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Franche-Comte region, the book explores the meanings and values of the forest to a range of stakeholders– the state, landowners, manufacturers, and peasants–all of whom sought varying modes and degrees of control over Frances woodland resources and spaces. Examining key moments in the states attempt to manage the forest, the book pays close attention to local forms of response and resistance to interventions such as the Ordinance of 1669 and the Forest Code of 1827. Revealing the deeply political significance of environmental resources and concerns throughout a period of revolutionary upheaval, including shifts from monarchy to republic to empire, and back again, Forests in Revolutionary France i

  • Ethan Katz, “The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France” (Harvard UP, 2015)

    28/06/2016 Duration: 57min

    In The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France (Harvard University Press, 2015), Ethan Katz examines and interrogates Jewish-Muslim relations from 1914 to the present. Arguing that interactions between Jews and Muslims must be understood in and through the respective, changing statuses and relationships of both communities to the French state, The Burdens of Brotherhood pursues the history of this “triangular affair.” Drawing on a range of archival, press and media sources, as well as oral interviews, the book emphasizes everyday lives and mutual perceptions in and between spaces private and public, local and transnational. Its chapters move from the diversity and legacies of wartime experiences, to family and community gathering places in three different French cities (Paris, Strasbourg, and Marseille), to the routes and mobilities of people, cultures, and politics across the Mediterranean. The Burdens of Brotherhood revisits the First World War, the interwar years, t

  • Jeremy Ahearne, “Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

    08/06/2016 Duration: 38min

    How did two right wing presidents use culture to govern France? In Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Jeremy Ahearne, a Professor of French Studies and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick, explores are range of examples to probe the decade of Right Wing government between 2002 and 2012. Drawing on the implicit/explicit distinction in cultural policy studies, Ahearne considers how core cultural concepts have changed in France, for example the French idea of ‘laicity’ and state secularism, as well as discussing specific cultural examples. These include television and media policy, museum building, eduction policy and the political uses of French history. Overall the book is framed by the continuities and differences between the Chriac and Sarkozy regimes in France, along with the struggle for hegemony over culture and thus over government. The book will be of interest to cultural policy, cultural and media studies and French scho

  • Kristin Ross, “Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune” (Verso, 2015)

    28/05/2016 Duration: 01h18s

    One hundred and forty-five years ago this week, the French state massacred thousands of its own people during the semaine sanglante (bloody week) of the Paris Commune. Kristin Ross’ Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (Verso Books, 2015) pushes readers to consider Communard thought and actions in a frame that moves beyond the 72 days that traditionally define (and confine) the Commune as an event. This is a Commune that begins with the meetings and reunions of the 1860s rather than the states attempted seizure of the cannons protecting the capital in March 1871. Extending the spatial and temporal bounds of the Commune to include the lifetime of its participants and supporters within and beyond Paris, Communal Luxury opens up new possibilities for our historical understanding of 1871. It also renders visible and analyzes a neglected archive of Communard thought as a resource for contemporary political struggles and activisms in the 21st century. Liberating the Commune from both the Fr

  • Nicole Rudolph, “At Home in Postwar France: Modern Mass Housing and the Right to Comfort” (Berghahn Books, 2015)

    17/05/2016 Duration: 01h05s

    Nicole Rudolph‘s At Home in Postwar France: Modern Mass Housing and the Right to Comfort (Berghahn Books, 2015) contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the three decades after 1945 known as the Trente glorieuses. Rudolph’s emphasis is on French designs and experiences of dwelling, and the interior spaces of French homes in particular. The book argues that housing was essential to the modernizing project that French society engaged in during these years, a vital site of reconstruction in the wake of the Second World War, and a key locus of nation-building and democratization. In this period, the French state actively pursued policies that sought to guarantee its citizens the right to safe, hygienic, and comfortable homes that would nurture individual happiness while helping to strengthen families as the building blocks of a thriving society. From the creation of a Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism in 1945, to the housing crisis of 1953, to the yearly Salon des arts menagers promoting

  • Michael Broer, “Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny” (Pegasus, 2015)

    13/05/2016 Duration: 49min

    Most biographers writing about the life and achievements of Napoleon Bonaparte have focused on his dramatic personality or his military campaigns. In Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny (Pegasus, 2015) the inaugural volume of a projected three-volume biography of the French ruler Michael Broers’ takes a different approach. Drawing upon a new and vastly expanded collection of Napoleons letters to chronicle his subjects life from his early years in Corsica to the eve of his 1805 campaign, Broers focuses on his achievements in politics and state-building. He sees Napoleon’s time as conqueror and ruler of Italy as key both to his emergence as a prospective leader and to the development of his ideas of governance. Though applied bluntly in Egypt, their legacy in Napoleons development of the French state during his subsequent years as First Consul and as emperor are made clear by the author, who details how they created not just the structure of administration France uses to this day but more modern and unifor

  • Michael Goebel, “Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism” (Cambridge UP, 2015)

    28/04/2016 Duration: 56min

    Michael Goebel‘s Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015) thinks globally while focusing on the local, everyday histories of non-Europeans in Paris in the 1920s and 30s. Examining the myriad ways that Paris functioned as a hatchery or clearinghouse for the development of anti-imperial ideas and movements, the book argues that the social history of migration is central to any understanding of the political and intellectual histories of nationalism, from the interwar years through the period of decolonizations that followed the Second World War. Anti-Imperial Metropolis traces the experiences and statuses of different categories of non-Europeans in the city, groups identified variously as French citizens, colonial subjects, and foreigners. Interested in how non-European students, workers, and activists from various parts of the globe met and interacted in Paris, the book details how politicization happened when it did, and how dif

  • Allison Drew, “We Are No Longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria” (Manchester UP, 2014)

    31/03/2016 Duration: 56min

    Allison Drew‘s We Are No Longer in France: Communists in Colonial Algeria (Manchester University Press, 2014) traces the long, complex history of communism in Algeria throughout the colonial period. Rethinking the “narratives of failure” that have hitherto dominated studies of the Communist Party of Algeria (PCA), the book looks at the movement “on its own terms,” rather than as a mere political subsidiary of the French Communist Party (PCF). Examining the role of the French state in suppressing communism in Algeria prior to 1962, the book also looks closely at the tensions between communism and nationalism as the struggle for independence developed over the course of the twentieth century. Inclusive of both urban and rural populations, and flexible with respect to religious and nationalist beliefs and ideals, the PCA opened up “political space” in ways that other left movements/parties in France and elsewhere were either unwilling or unable to do. Drawing on a range

  • Daniella Doron, “Jewish Youth and Identity in Postwar France: Rebuilding Family and Nation” (Indiana UP, 2015)

    21/03/2016 Duration: 31min

    In Jewish Youth and Identity in Postwar France: Rebuilding Family and Nation (Indiana UP, 2015), Daniella Doron, Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Monash University, looks at the post-WWII effort to rehabilitate Jewish children and to reconstruct Jewish families in France.  She argues that ideas about the family were tied to national identity, citizenship, and ethnicity. Her works adds to the growing scholarship on the history of childhood and the history of the Jewish family.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • Robert Priest, “The Gospel According to Renan: Reading, Writing, and Religion in Nineteenth-Century France” (Oxford UP, 2014)

    10/03/2016 Duration: 01h23s

    Robert Priest‘s The Gospel According to Renan: Reading, Writing, and Religion in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford University Press, 2014) is a fascinating book about another fascinating book: Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jesus, published in 1863. Renan’s was a nineteenth-century non-fiction bestseller, but is far from widely read today. In a series of chapters that explore issues of authorship, content, and reception, Priest offers readers a contextual analysis of this “secular” life of Jesus within Renan’s own biography and oeuvre. He also examines the controversy surrounding the book in France, and traces its continuing impact and legacies into the early twentieth century. One of the major contributions of this work is its analysis of the popular reception of Vie de Jesus by French citizens across the political and religious spectrum. In addition to contemporary press and pamphlet discussion of the text, Priest also consulted hundreds of letters addressed to its author from men

  • Domna Stanton, “The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France: Women Writ, Women Writing” (Ashgate, 2014)

    28/01/2016 Duration: 55min

    Domna Stanton‘s latest book The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France: Women Writ, Women Writing (Ashgate, 2014) is a series of six case studies with important literary, historical, and theoretical implications for how we think about gender in the seventeenth century and beyond. In two parts, the first focused on male and the second focused on female writers in this period, the book examines critically key works by Racine, Fénelon, Poulain de la Barre, La Guette, La Fayette and Sévigné. In close readings that situate authors and texts within a broader historical context, Stanton examines gender as a dynamic, relational construct across multiple genres, including drama in its comic and tragic forms, letters, treatise, novella, and memoir. Departing from the premise that the querelle des femmes must also be understood as a querelle des hommes, The Dynamics of Gender is concerned throughout with women and men, femininity and masculinity, writers and the written-about. Drawing on and engaging with th

  • Sarah Maza, “Violette Noziere: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris” (U. of California Press, 2012)

    18/12/2015 Duration: 48min

    On August 21, 1933, the teenaged Violette Noziere attempted to kill both her parents. At first, seemingly so clearcut, the case ultimately came to be characterized by a “troubling ambiguity” that unsettled Paris for years. Were the Nozieresan upstanding middle-class family? Was Violette a victim of sexual assault, her father a heinous predator? Was Violette a sexual degenerate? In an age of unprecedented social mobility, had the family tragically overstepped, with the parents granting a wild daughter too much freedom? No one knew. It was the perfect cautionary tale of the time- giving voice to concerns of contemporary France’s, fears of changing attitudes towards gender, class, industry, economics, art, everything. In Violette Noziere: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris, Sarah Maza weaves together social history with an astute analysis of the times to paint a vivid portrait of Noziere’s society, her circumstances and her crime. It’s a gripping tale that provides an intimate glimpse

  • Maud S. Mandel, “Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict” (Princeton University Press, 2014)

    11/12/2015 Duration: 31min

    In Muslims and Jews in France: History of a Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2014), Maud S. Mandel, Dean of the College at Brown University, challenges the view that rising anti-Semitism in France is rooted solely in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Instead, Mandel argues that the Muslim-Jewish conflict in France has been shaped by local, national, and international forces, including the decolonization of French North Africa. Looking at key moments, from Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, to the 1968 student riots, to France’s experiments with multiculturalism in the 1980s, Mandel poses a challenge to the reductionist narrative of Muslim-Jewish polarization.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • Yarimar Bonilla, “Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment” (U of Chicago Press, 2015)

    10/12/2015 Duration: 45min

    As overseas departments of France, the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are frequently described as anomalies within the postcolonial Caribbean. Yet in reality, as Yarimar Bonilla argues in her new book Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment (University of Chicago Press, 2015), the majority of Caribbean states are in fact non-sovereign. Moreover, even for those nations that are nominally independent, their sovereignty is nonetheless continually compromised by the foreign influence that comes with globalization. Thus, the Caribbean as a whole is a region where non-sovereignty is the dominant political status, requiring alternative political frameworks that move beyond identifying sovereignty as the inevitable and necessary result of decolonization. Bonilla calls this process of imagining and testing out these new frameworks “non-sovereign politics.” Non-Sovereign Futures examines the emergence of non-sovereign politics through an ethnography of labor acti

  • Sarah Abrevaya Stein, “Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria” (U of Chicago, 2014)

    07/12/2015 Duration: 43min

    In Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (University of Chicago, 2014), Sarah Abrevaya Stein, professor of history and the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA, takes a new perspective to the history of Algerian Jews, looking at the Saharan Jews to south of the larger, coastal communities.  Saharan Jews received different treatment from French authorities, asking us to rethink the story we tell about colonialism and decolonization and Jewish history. Stein draws on materials from thirty archives across six countries to shed light on this small, but revealing, community that has not received its due attention until now.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • Jerome Bourdon, “Histoire de la television sous de Gaulle” (Presses des Mines, 2014)

    17/11/2015 Duration: 59min

    Jerome de Bourdon‘s Histoire de la television sous de Gaulle (Presses des Mines, 2014) is a revised version of a book that first appeared in 1990. This edition has been revamped, and includes a new introduction in which Bourdon explores the historiography of the medium in the years since the book’s original publication. A history of television that is also a history of the De Gaulle presidency and the early years of the Fifth Republic, Histoire de la television sous de Gaulle examines a range of issues, from government legislation to programming and content, to the variety of personnel (directors, producers, technicians, administrators) who made television happen during this “era of professionalization.” Exploring the medium as both information and entertainment, the book considers the relationship between television and the cinema, situating television within the broader cultural and political history of France during this critical period. Covering key events and turning points, inclu

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