SSFH 2024 reading list

This book, a companion to the author's acclaimed Emile and Isaac Pereire (2015), sheds new light on elite Jewish families in nineteenth-century France.

This book explores the process by which the French Basque country acquired a folkloric regional identity in the long nineteenth century. It argues that, despite originating in pre-'modern' customs, such stereotypical identity was invented in the long nineteenth century as part of France's process of nation-building.

How does our perception of time shape our political ideas and commitments? This cutting-edge monograph makes a major contribution to the history of time by exploring how thinkers and activists of the French radical left and right conceived of the past, present and future in the period between the Dreyfus Affair and the First World War.

Republican passions provides an innovative perspective on the founding of the French Third Republic. Based on the archives of Léon Laurent-Pichat, journalist, Deputy and Life Senator, it demonstrates the crucial role of family and friendship networks in the republican movement during the Second Empire and early Third Republic.

Challenging the subject's current interpretation, this microhistorical study traces the social and civic dynamics of the French Revolution's religious politics within five small towns.

Sport and physical culture in Occupied France is a scholarly and readable account of French sport during the Vichy regime. It explores two competing phenomena: the state's promotion of physical culture to rehabilitate French people during the Occupation and athletes' and sporting associations' use of the state's efforts to serve their own agendas.

This book examines the life and career of popular French psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto (1908-88). It connects her rise to two broader histories: the dramatic growth of psychoanalysis in postwar France and the long-running debate over the family and the proper role of women in society.

Looking at the royal rituals around the death of Louis XV and the accession of Louis XVI, this book sheds new light on the politics and culture of the period, offering original perspectives on court culture, the transition of power, the recall of the Paris parlement and the first year of Louis XVI's reign, including his coronation in June 1775.

The French mutinies of 1919 stretched from the Soviet Union through to France's naval ports. It is the first study to try to understand the subjective world of the mutineers.

This book traces the history of post-war France by tracking the Comité Régional d'Action Viticole (CRAV), a militant collective of winegrowers who have used protest and violence to push back against attempts to modernise the French economy and state and the wider impacts of globalisation.

This book is about the most sweeping reform in the history of the French monarchy: the creation of assemblies at all levels of administration. The resistance of lords and office holders exposed their hereditary power over commoners, who sought to throw off their subordination when the crisis of the monarchy offered the opportunity in 1789.

Between 1914 and 1918, military, press and amateur photographers produced thousands of pictures. Classified in archives, collected in personal albums and circulated in illustrated magazines, photographs were supposed to tell the story of the war. This book argues that photographic practices also shaped combatants and civilians' war experiences.

How did the French rule their colonial overseas possessions dispersed all over the world? This book focuses on local populations and workers in the colonies. Indigenous experts, slaves or indentured servants as well as French engineers and naval officers contributed to the building of the foundation of the French empire.

This book productively contests the supposedly exclusive feminine aspect of the style moderne (Art Deco). Through a sustained focus on the figure of the dandy, the books claims an essential role and place of the male body and masculinity in the history of Art Deco.

This groundbreaking book highlights a generation of women who made art as a way of defining a culture of experimental thought and practice, against the backdrop of the French women's movement or Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (1970-81)