Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the E...
In creating a detailed impression of the medieval race-making that would be reconfigured into the biological racism of the modern era, Heng reaches beyond medievalists and race-studies scholars to anyone interested in the long history of race.
58 min
502
Alexandre Kojève, "Atheism," trans by Jeff Love...
Ranging across Heidegger, Buddhism, Christianity, German idealism, Russian literature, and mathematics, Kojève advances a novel argument about freedom and authority...
75 min
503
Stefanos Geroulanos, "Transparency in Postwar F...
In France as nowhere else, transparency was a particular type of problem...
54 min
504
Sun-Young Park, "Ideals of the Body: Architectu...
We know quite a bit about the physical signatures of urban “modernity” foisted upon Paris by Baron Haussmann in the late nineteenth century, but little scholarship has seized on its precursors...
49 min
505
Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, "Suez Deconstruc...
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 potential master class in statecraft and the politics of strategy.
68 min
506
Benoît Majerus, "From the Middle Ages to Today:...
Benoît Majerus uses an impressively wide range of visual sources, from religious images and architectural photographs to neuroleptic advertisements and administrative maps.
32 min
507
Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)
If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "greatest Englishman In history", then Charles de Gaulle was without a doubt, the greatest Frenchman since Napoleon Bonaparte...
At the end of his previous book, Queer French: Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship (Routledge, 2007), Denis Provencher discusses a map of “gay Paris” drawn by Samir....
59 min
509
Andrew S. Curran, "Diderot and the Art of Think...
Denis Diderot has long been regarded as one of the leading figures of the French Enlightenment...
Paola Bertucci's Artisanal Enlightenment: Science and the Mechanical Arts in Old Regime France (Yale University Press, 2018) is an innovative new look at the role of artisans in the French Enlightenment.
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention...
61 min
512
Danna Agmon, "A Colonial Affair: Commerce, Conv...
People sometimes forget—if they are even aware—that France’s empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included a colonial presence in South Asia, a presence that at one time rivaled that of the British.
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 deportation and genocide has not received sufficient attention. With Stealing Home: Looting, Restitution,
57 min
514
Patricia Lorcin and Todd Shepard, “French Medit...
Following a 2011 meeting of the annual Mediterranean Workshop at the University of Minnesota, Patricia Lorcin (a co-convener) approached Todd Shepard (one of the workshop participants that year) about editing a volume focused on the Mediterranean in th...
57 min
515
Venus Bivar, “Organic Resistance: The Struggle ...
In Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Venus Bivar documents the development of agriculture in post-1944 France. Through the Second World War,
78 min
516
Hervé Guillemain, “Schizophrenics in the Twenti...
Schizophrènes au XXe siècle: des effets secondaires de l’histoire [Schizophrenics in the Twentieth Century: The Side Effects of History] is a strong argument in support of the history of psychiatry “from below.
39 min
517
Laila Amine, “Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of I...
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 French capital on a map. Geography is, after all stable, is it not?
35 min
518
Ludivine Broch, “Ordinary Workers, Vichy and th...
This spring and summer, the workers of the Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF) staged a series of rolling strikes, slowing and shutting down the country’s major lines of travel and transport.
59 min
519
Jonathan Smyth, “Robespierre and the Festival o...
In his speech delivered to the National Convention on 18 Floréal (May 7, 1794), Maximilien Robespierre shocked his listeners as he attacked the proponents of atheism and dechristianization in the government: “Who nominated you to tell the people that G...
63 min
520
Richard S. Hopkins, “Planning the Greenspaces o...
Beginning in the mid-1800s, Paris experienced an unprecedented growth in the development of parks, squares, and gardens. This greenspace was part of Napoleon III’s plan for a new, modern Paris and a France restored to glory on the international stage.
49 min
521
The Invisible Committee, “Now” (Semiotext(e), 2...
What could the communism of the future be? In Now (Semiotext(e), 2017), The Invisible Committee explores our current crisis by thinking through key critical theory questions, along with specific interventions on French and global politics.
What role did Christianity play in Algeria before, during, and after the war of independence? In Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Empire in France and Algeria (Cambridge University Press, 2016),
58 min
523
Peter Sahlins, “1668: The Year of the Animal in...
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 in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France. Focusing on the years in and around 1668,
51 min
524
Laura Kalba, “Color in the Age of Impressionism...
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 Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art (Penn State University Press,
58 min
525
Bruno Chaouat, “Is Theory Good for the Jews?: F...
“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?: French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemitism (Liverpool University Press, 2017) .