New Books in French Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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576
Michel Leiris, “Phantom Africa” (Seagull Books,...
Between 1931 and 1933, French writer Michel Leiris participated in a state-sponsored expedition to document the cultural practices of people in west and east Africa. The Mission Dakar-Djibouti employed some questionable,
76 min
577
Christopher Church, “Paradise Destroyed: Catast...
Hurricanes, fires, a volcano eruption: disasters are political, as Christopher Church argues. His new book, Paradise Destroyed: Catastrophe and Citizenship in the French Caribbean (University of Nebraska Press, 2017),
37 min
578
Kathryn Brown. ed., “Perspectives on Degas” (Ro...
Edgar Degas died in the fall of 1917. Marking this 100th anniversary, Kathryn Brown‘s edited collection, Perspectives on Degas (Routledge, 2016) brings together a range of authors and methodologies to consider the French artist in context,
53 min
579
Stuart Elden, “Foucault: The Birth of Power” (P...
How did Foucault become a public, political intellectual? In Foucault: The Birth of Power (Polity Press, 2017), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick, follows up his book on Foucault’s Last Decade with r...
43 min
580
Regine Jean-Charles, “Conflict Bodies: The Poli...
Regine Jean-Charles’ Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Ohio State University Press, 2014) foregrounds black women as speaking subjects in narrating and protesting sexual violence.
41 min
581
Andrew Smith, “Terror and Terroir: The Winegrow...
Andrew Smith‘s Terror and Terroir: The Winegrowers of the Languedoc and Modern France (Manchester University Press, 2016) is a political history of wine radicalism. Focused on the producers rather than the consumers of what Roland Barthes famously refe...
59 min
582
Paige Bowers, “The General’s Niece: The Little-...
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 who took up the cause was his young niece Genevieve. In The General’s Niece: The Little Known de Gaul...
52 min
583
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, “Bricktop’s Paris: ...
When Dorothy Sterling wrote her book about nineteenth-century black women in America, she stated in the introduction that the book was not a definitive history of black women but a sourcebook to lead others to “compile a complete history.
19 min
584
Lori Marso, “Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in...
Lori Marso’s new book, Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter (Duke University Press, 2017), delves into Simone de Beauvoir’s political thought, feminism, and activism. The text is a fascinating exploration of these topics and complexities,
65 min
585
Maurice Samuels, “The Right to Difference: Fren...
In The Right To Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Maurice Samuels, Betty Jane Anylan Professor of French and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University,
23 min
586
Matthew Gillis, “Heresy and Dissent in the Caro...
In the popular imagination, heresy belongs to the Christian Middle Ages in much the way that the Crusades or courtly culture do. Non-specialists in the medieval field may assume that the problem of heresy always existed, uniformly,
47 min
587
Alexia Yates, “Selling Paris: Property and Comm...
What comes to mind when you think of Paris in the nineteenth century? For me, its revolutionary politics, the circulation of increasing numbers of people and goods, a range of spectacular cultural displays and amusements,
60 min
588
Allan H. Pasco, “Balzac, Literary Sociologist” ...
In Balzac, Literary Sociologist (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Allan H. Pasco explores the talents of the writer whose reputation has been primarily based on his extraordinary gift to compose captivating stories. In his meticulously conducted research,
52 min
589
Bruno Perreau, “Queer Theory: The French Respon...
At once wonderfully clear and bursting with complexity, the title of Bruno Perreau‘s book, Queer Theory: The French Response (Stanford University Press, 2016) is one of my favorites of the past several years. An interrogation of the meanings of queer,
59 min
590
Rebecca Scales, “Radio and the Politics of Soun...
What did sound mean to French people as radio and other listening technologies began to proliferate in the early twentieth century? What was the nature and significance of French auditory culture in the years between the two world wars?
59 min
591
Michaela DeSoucey, “Contested Tastes: Foie Gras...
A heritage food in France, and a high-priced obscurity in the United States. But in both countries, foie gras, the specially fattened liver of a duck or goose, has the power to stir a remarkable array of emotions and produce heated debates.
64 min
592
Sarah Hammerschlag, “Broken Tablets: Levinas, D...
In Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida, and the Literary Afterlife of Religion (Columbia University Press, 2016), Sarah Hammerschlag, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School,
31 min
593
Mark Braude, “Making Monte Carlo: A History of ...
Mark Braude’s Making Monte Carlo: A History of Speculation and Spectacle (Simon and Schuster, 2016) tells the captivating story of the rise of Monte Carlo as Europe’s most famous casino-resort from the second half of the nineteenth century to the end o...
60 min
594
Alexandra Deutsch, “A Woman of Two Worlds: Eliz...
Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte was a celebrity in 19th century America thanks in no small measure to her brief marriage to Napoleon Bonaparte’s youngest brother Jerome. In A Woman of Two Worlds: Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (Maryland Historical Society...
69 min
595
David Shafer, “Antonin Artaud” (Reaktion/U Chic...
“Artaud lived with his neck placed firmly in the noose.” -Bauhaus* David Shafer’s new biography, Antonin Artaud (Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press, 2016), situates the life of this enigmatic and fascinating figure in historical context...
58 min
596
Jennifer L. Palmer, “Intimate Bonds: Family and...
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 relationship...
41 min
597
Kathryn Kleppinger, “Branding the Beur Author: ...
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 thir...
60 min
598
Caroline Ford, “Natural Interests: The Contest ...
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.
53 min
599
Emile Chabal, “A Divided Republic: Nation, Stat...
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 p...
59 min
600
Kieko Matteson, “Forests in Revolutionary Franc...
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,
51 min