HIST 71500: “Spaces and Identities in France and the Francophone

HIST 71500: “Spaces and Identities in France and the Francophone World since 1750”
Professor David G. Troyansky
Spring 2016
Wednesdays, 2:00-4:00
Office Hours: Wednesdays, 1:00-2:00 and 4:00-4:30 and by appointment.
E-mail: [email protected]
Preliminary Syllabus
A well-known French slogan refers to France (or more particularly the French republic) as “one
and indivisible.” However, historians know well the various ways in which France has been
quite divisible. We will explore those ways by looking particularly at the theme of spaces and
identities. We will pay attention to the history of the French landscape, the variety of divisions
that are associated with the scholarship on history and memory, ideas of neighborhood in Paris in
the eighteenth century, provincial cities and their surroundings in the nineteenth, and a variety of
locations and “communities” in France and the Francophone world in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. The first two thirds of the course will involve common and collective readings in
the scholarly literature; the last third will involve student research and presentations on particular
spaces and identities.
Requirements: Class participation (25%), five 2-3-page essays on assigned readings (25%), and
a 20-page research paper (50%). Many of the suggested readings are in French, but students who
are not working in French history will find enough readings in English. The lists of readings are
not exhaustive and may be supplemented according to student interests.
Schedule:
Week One: Introduction: Spaces and Identities in French History.
Themes drawn from the last half century of French historiography include the relationship
between geography and history in France, the emphasis on space in classic Annales
historiography, the impact of the French Revolution on social spaces, French appropriations of
microhistory and reflections on matters of scale, and the impact of decolonization and migration
on the writing of French history. Recommended: Caroline Ford, “Landscape and Environment
in French Geographical and Historical Thought: New Directions in French Historical Writing,”
French Historical Studies, vol. 24 (Winter 2001): 125-134.
Week Two: A Few Major Works in the Annales Tradition.
Read in at least one of the following three works: Marc Bloch, French Rural History; Fernand
Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World; The Identity of France. Read at least
three relevant chapters in Pierre Nora, Les lieux de mémoire (Realms of Memory). See, for
example, in the volume on La République: Antoine Prost, “Les monuments aux morts,” JeanClément Martin, “La Vendée, région-mémoire,” Madeleine Rebérioux, “Le mur des Fédérés”; in
the volume on La Nation: Jacques le Goff, “Reims, ville du sacre,” Françoise Cachin, “Le
paysage du peintre,” Marcel Roncayalo, “Le paysage du savant,” Daniel Nordman, “Les GuidesJoanne,” Jean-Yves Guiomar, “Le ‘Tableau de la géographie de la France’ de Vidal de la
Blache,” Bernard Guenée, “Des limites féodales aux frontières politiques,” Daniel Nordman,
“Des limites d’État aux frontières nationales,” Jean-Marie Mayeur, “Une mémoire-frontière:
L’Alsace,” Eugen Weber, “L’Hexagone,” Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, “Nord-Sud,” Antoine
Prost, “Verdun,” June Hargrove, “Les statues de Paris,” Daniel Milo, “Le nom des rues,” Olivier
Nora, “La visite au grand écrivain”; in the volume on Les France, Krzysztof Pomian, “Francs et
Gaulois,” Claude Langlois, “Catholiques et laïcs,” Gérard Noiriel, “Français et étrangers,”
Philippe Burrin, “Vichy,” Philippe Joutard, “Le musée du Désert,” Pierre Birnbaum, “Grégoire,
Dreyfus, Drancy et Copernic,” Michel Mollat du Jourdin, “Le front de mer,” Andrée Corvol, “La
forêt,” Roger Chartier, “La ligne Saint-Malo-Genève,” Alain Corbin, “Paris-province,” Maurice
Agulhon, “Le centre et la périphérie,” Jacques Revel, “La région,” Marcel Roncayolo, “Le
département,” Armand Frémont, “La terre,” Philippe Boutry, “Le clocher,” André Vauchez, “La
cathédrale,” Jacques Revel, “La cour,” Thierry Gasnier, “Le local,” Benoît Leciq, “Le café,”
Georges Vigarello, “Le tour de France,” Jean-Paul Demoule, “Lascaux,” Olivier Buchsenschutz
et Alain Schnapp, “Alésia,” Guy Lobrichon, “Vézelay,” Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, “NotreDame de Paris,” Jean-Pierre Babelon, “Les châteaux de la Loire,” François Loyer, “Le SacréCoeur de Montmartre,” Henri Loyrette, “La tour Eiffel,” Maurice Agulhon, “Paris.”
Week Three: Major Regional Studies.
Familiarize yourself with two of the following and write a 2-3-page essay concerning sources,
arguments, methods, and senses of place:
René Baehrel, Une croissance: La Basse Provence rurale (fin 15e – 1789)
Jean-Pierre Bardet, Rouen aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Les mutations d’un espace social
Gérard Bouchard, Le village immobile: Senneley-en-Sologne au XVIIIe siècle
Yves Castan, Honnêteté et relations sociales en Languedoc, 1715-1780
Hubert Charbonneau, Tourouvre au Perche aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Etude de démographie
historique
Alain Collomp, La maison du père: famille et village en Haute-Provence aux XVIIe et XVIIIe
siècles.
Alain Corbin, Archaïsme et modernité en Limousin au xixe siècle, 1845-1880
Adeline Daumard et François Furet, Structures et relations sociales à Paris au XVIIIe siècle.
Pierre Deyon, Amiens, capitale provinciale: Etude sur la société urbaine au XVIIIe siècle.
Robert Forster, The Nobility of Toulouse in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Economic
History.
Georges Frêche, Toulouse et la région Midi-Pyrénées au siècle des Lumières.
Maurice Garden, Lyon et les Lyonnais au XVIIIe siècle.
Pierre Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730
Olwen Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France; Bayeux in the Late Eighteenth Century:
A Social Study.
François Lebrun, Les hommes et la mort en Anjou aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Peasants of Languedoc; L’argent, l’amour, et la mort en pays
d’Oc.
John McManners, French Ecclesiastical Society under the Ancien Régime: A Study of Angers in
the Eighteenth Century
Alain Molinier, Stagnation et croissance: Le Vivarais aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.
Jean-Claude Perrot, Genèse d’une ville moderne: Caen au XVIIIe siècle.
Daniel Roche, Le siècle des lumières en province: Académies et académiciens provinciaux; Les
Républicains des lettres: gens de culture et Lumières au XVIIIe siècle; Les circulations dans
l’Europe moderne, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle.
Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees
Pierre de Saint-Jacob, Les paysans de la Bourgogne du Nord au dernier siècle de l’Ancien
Régime.
Robert Schneider, Public Life in Toulouse, 1463-1789; The Ceremonial City: Toulouse
Observed, 1738-1780.
Michel Vovelle, Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe siècle. See also De la
cave au grenier: Un itinéraire en Provence au XVIIIe siècle; Folies d’Aix.
Week Four: Eighteenth-Century Paris.
Read both of the following books:
Arlette Farge and Jacques Revel, The Vanishing Children of Paris: Rumor and Politics before
the French Revolution
David Garrioch, The Making of Revolutionary Paris
Week Five: Revolution and Space.
Familiarize yourself with two of the following and write a 2-3-page essay concerning sources,
arguments, methods, and senses of place:
Maurice Agulhon, La sociabilité méridionale: Confréries et associations dans la vie collective
en Provence orientale à la fin du 18e siècle
Serge Bonin and Claude Langlois, Atlas de la Révolution Française
Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia, and Jacques Revel, Une politique de la langue. La
Révolution Française et les patois: L’enquête de Grégoire
Richard Cobb, Paris and its Provinces
Richard Etlin, Symbolic Space: French Enlightenment Architecture and its Legacy
Paul Hanson, The Jacobin Republic under Fire: the Federalist Revolt in the French Revolution.
Jeffry Kaplow, Elbeuf during the Revolutionary Period: History and Social Structure
Georges Lefebvre, Les paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution Française
Ted Margadant, Urban Rivalries in the French Revolution
Peter McPhee, Revolution and Environment in Southern France: peasants, lords, and murder in
the Corbières, 1780-1830.
Mona Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire
Noelle Plack, Common Land, Wine and the French Revolution: rural society and economy in
southern France, c. 1789-1820
Rebecca Spang, Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution
E.C. Spary, Utopia’s Garden: French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution
Timothy Tackett, The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution
Charles Tilly, The Vendée
Emmanuel Todd and Hervé Le Bras, L’invention de la France
David G. Troyansky, “Alsatian Knowledge and European Culture: Jérémie-Jacques Oberlin,
Language, and the Protestant Gymnase in Revolutionary Strasbourg,” Francia, Vol. 27, No. 2
(2000/2001): 119-138.
Michel Vovelle, La découverte de la politique
Week Six: Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Spaces and Identities.
Familiarize yourself with two of the following and write a 2-3-page essay concerning sources,
arguments, methods, and senses of place:
Patrice Bourdelais, Le nouvel âge de la vieillesse
Jean-Claude Caron, Générations romantiques: Les étudiants de Paris et le Quartier latin (18141851).
Louis Chevalier, La formation de la population parisienne au XIXe siècle; Laboring Classes and
Dangerous Classes in Paris in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century.
Alain Corbin, Archaïsme et modernité en Limousin au xixe siècle, 1845-1880; Village of
Cannibals; The Foul and the Fragrant; The Lure of the Sea; Village Bells.
Caroline Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in
Brittany; “Nature, Culture, and Conservation in France and Her Colonies, 1840-1940,” Past and
Present, no. 183 (May 2004): 173-198.
Alice Garner, A Shifting Shore: Locals, Outsiders, and the Transformation of a French Fishing
Town, 1823-2000.
Stéphane Gerson, The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in NineteenthCentury France
Patrice Higonnet, Pont-de-Montvert: Social Structure and Politics in a French Village, 17001914.
Dominique Kalifa, Les bas-fonds: Histoire d’un imaginaire.
Rebecca McCoy, “Alsatians into Frenchmen: the Construction of National Identities at SainteMarie-aux Mines, 1815-1851,” in French History 12 (1998), 429-451.
John Merriman, The Margins of City Life: Explorations on the French Urban Frontier, 18151851; The Red City: Limoges and the French Nineteenth Century
Peter Sahlins, Forest Rites: the war of the demoiselles in nineteenth-century France.
William Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: the Language of Labor from the Old Regime to
1848; Structure and Mobility: The Men and Women of Marseille, 1820-1870.
David G. Troyansky, "Memorializing Saint-Quentin: Monuments, Inaugurations and History in
the Third Republic," in French History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1999): 48-76.
Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen
Week Seven: Migrations and Empire.
Familiarize yourself with two of the following and write a 2-3-page essay concerning sources,
arguments, methods, and senses of place:
Elisa Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the
Early Twentieth Century.
Thomas Dodman, “Un pays pour la colonie: Mourir de nostalgie en Algérie française, 18301880,” Annales: HSS, juillet-octobre 2011, no. 3, pp. 743-784.
Eric Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas
James Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization of
Algeria.
Mary D. Lewis, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881-1938; The
Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 19181940.
Patricia Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial Algeria; ed.,
Algeria and France, 1800-2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia; “Rome and France in Africa:
Recovering Colonial Algeria’s Latin Past,” French Historical Studies 25, no. 2 (2002): 295-329.
Neil MacMaster, Colonial Migrants and Racism: Algerians in France, 1900-62.
Leslie Page Moch, The Pariahs of Yesterday: Breton Migrants in Paris
Gérard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot
Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, eds., The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France.
David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920.
Clifford Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control between the
World Wars.
Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France
Tyler Stovall and Georges Van Den Abbeele, eds., French Civilization and its Discontents:
Nationalism, Colonialism, Race
Owen White, Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French
West Africa, 1895-1960.
Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the
Two World Wars
Week Eight: Transnational Spaces and Identities.
Read Hafid Gafaïti, Patricia Lorcin, and David G. Troyansky, eds., Transnational Spaces and
Identities in the Francophone World; for those interested, there is an accompanying volume by
the same editors: Migrances, diasporas et transculturalités francophones: Littératures et
cultures d’Afrique, des Caraïbes, d’Europe et du Québec.
Week Nine: Contemporary Issues of Identity
Read one of the following and write a 2-page essay concerning sources, arguments, methods, and
senses of place:
Philip Dine, Images of the Algerian War in French Fiction and Film, 1954-1992.
Françoise Gaspard, A Small City in France.
Jim House and Neil MacMaster, Paris 1961: Algerians, State Terror, and Post-Colonial
Memories.
Trica Danielle Keaton, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, and Tyler Stovall, eds., Black
France/France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness
Patricia Lorcin, ed., Algeria and France, 1800-2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia.
Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil.
Robert Weiner and Richard Sharpless, An Uncertain Future: Voices of a French Jewish
Community: the Jews of Dijon.
The events of 2015 are giving rise to a large number of publications, some of which are rooted in
historical study.
Weeks Ten--Fourteen: Student and Guest Presentations