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French Studies
Interviews with scholars of France about their new books.
April 16, 2024
Traces of a Jewish Artist
Graphic artist, illustrator, painter, and cartoonist Rahel Szalit (1888-1942) was among the best-known Jewish women artists in Weimar Berlin. But afte…
April 8, 2024
Poisoned Wells
Between 1348 and 1350, Jews throughout Europe were accused of having caused the spread of the Black Death by poisoning the wells from which the entire…
April 5, 2024
The Red Widow
Sex. Lies. Murder. Sarah Horowitz's The Red Widow: The Scandal that Shook Paris and the Woman Behind It All (Sourcebooks, 2022) is a book I literally …
April 3, 2024
The Invention of Prehistory
Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings an…
April 2, 2024
Marie de Vignerot, Richelieu's Forgotten Advisor and Heiress
Despite being one of the most influential women of 17th century France, Marie de Vignerot has been largely forgotten. The niece, heiress, and advisor …
March 31, 2024
A Delicate Matter
Eighteenth-century France witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of materially unstable art, from oil paintings that cracked within years of their c…
March 31, 2024
Montesquieu's 'The Spirit of the Laws'
The Spirit of the Laws not only systematizes the foundational ideas of “separation of powers” and “balances and checks,” it provides the decisive resp…
March 16, 2024
Vernacular Law
Custom was fundamental to mediaeval legal practice. Whether in a property dispute or a trial for murder, the aggrieved and accused would go to lay cou…
March 14, 2024
Governing the Displaced
Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed un…
March 14, 2024
The Kings of Algiers
On July 27th, 1827, the dey of Algiers struck the French consul over his country’s refusal to pay back its debts–specifically, to two Jewish merchant …
March 12, 2024
Forests of Refuge
Forests of Refuge: Decolonizing Environmental Governance in the Amazonian Guiana Shield (U California Press, 2024) questions the effectiveness of mark…
March 6, 2024
Paris and the Art of Transposition
A brief stay in France was, for many Chinese workers and Chinese Communist Party leaders, a vital stepping stone for their careers during the cultura…
February 19, 2024
A Widow's Vengeance After the Wars of Religion
Paris, 1599. At the end of the French Wars of Religion, the widow Renée Chevalier instigated the prosecution of the military captain Mathurin Delacanc…
February 18, 2024
Post-Imperial Possibilities
How can territory and peoples be organized? After the dissolution of empires, was the nation-state the only way to unite people politically, culturall…
February 17, 2024
The Sun King at Sea
Mediterranean maritime art and the forced labour on which it depended were fundamental to the politics and propaganda of France’s King Louis XIV (r. 1…
February 14, 2024
The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing
In The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing (Oxford University Press, 2022), Alison Downham Moore discusses her cont…
January 28, 2024
Ridley Scott's "Napoleon"
Charles Coutino discusses Ridley Scott's film "Napoleon" with military historian Jeremy Black. Is it accurate? Is it inaccurate? Does it matter? Liste…
January 27, 2024
Llamas beyond the Andes
Camelids are vital to the cultures and economies of the Andes. The animals have also been at the heart of ecological and social catastrophe: Europeans…
January 19, 2024
Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France
Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France: Marine Insurance, War and the Atlantic Empire Under Louis XIV (Boydell Press, 2023) closely analyse…
January 12, 2024
Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930
Judith Surkis's Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930 (Cornell UP, 2019) traces the intersection of colonialism, law, land expropriat…