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PODCAST

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. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

society & culture

All Episodes

56:17

I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/09/18

“My name has become a horror to all those who want slavery,” declared Jean‑Jacques Dessalines as he announced the independence of Haiti, the most radical nation‑state during the Age of Revolution and the first country ever to permanently outlaw slavery. Enslaved for the first thirty years of his life, Dessalines (c. 1758–1806) joined the revolution that abolished slavery within the French colony. Then he became a general in the colonial army of the new French Republic. When it was discovered that

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61:55

Alex R. Tipei, "Unintended Nations: How French...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/09/15

In the wake of Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, French liberals set out to create an informal empire. Their efforts to cultivate unequal partnerships with Christian, Greek-speaking elites in southeast Europe shaped national identities and structured global civilizational hierarchies over the decades that followed.Unintended Nations: France’s Empire of Civilization, Southeast Europe, and the Post-Napoleonic World (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2025) tracks a notion of civilization that developed in

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66:48

Kevin Passmore, "The Maginot Line: A New History of...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/09/13

The Maginot Line was a marvel of 1930s engineering. The huge forts, up to eighty meters underground, contained hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone exchanges, and even electric trains. Kilometres of underground galleries led to casements hidden in the terrain, and turrets that rose from the ground to fire upon the enemy. The fortifications were invulnerable to the heaviest artillery and to chemical warfare.Despite this extensive preparation, France fell to Germany in a little under six weeks

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72:22

Laura Hobson Faure, "Who Will Rescue Us?: The Story...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/09/12

The first account of Jewish children’s flight from Nazi Germany to France—and their subsequent escape to America from the Vichy regime At the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. While 10,000 of them escaped to Britain in the Kindertransport, only some 500 found a new home in France. Here they attempted to begin again—but their refuge would all too soon become a trap.For the first time, Laura Hobson Faure brings to life the experiences

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48:18

Christopher C. Gorham, "Matisse at War: Art and...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/09/09

In 1940, with the Nazis sweeping through France, Henri Matisse found himself at a personal and artistic crossroads. His 42-year marriage had ended, he was gravely ill, and after decades at the forefront of modern art, he was beset by doubt. As scores of famous figures escaped the country, Matisse took refuge in Nice, with his companion, Lydia Delectorskaya. By defiantly remaining, Matisse was a source of inspiration for his nation. While enemy agents and Resistance fighters played cat-and-mouse in

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55:54

Robert Ivermee, "Glorious Failure: The Forgotten...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/09/02

This is a powerful new account of a chapter in history that is crucial to understand, yet often overlooked. For 150 years, from the reign of Louis XIV to the downfall of Napoleon, France was an aggressive imperial power in South Asia, driven by the pursuit of greatness and riches. Through their East India company and state, the French established a far-reaching empire in India, only to see their dominant position undermined by conflict with Indian rulers, competition from other European nations, and

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38:35

Diana Souhami, "No Modernism Without Lesbians" (Head...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/08/31

Diana Souhami talks about her new book No Modernism Without Lesbians, out 2020 with Head of Zeus books. A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2020. This is the extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place – Paris, between the wars – fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer. They were all women who loved women. They

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36:04

Jérémy Filet, "The Jacobites and the Grand Tour:...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/08/26

The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational travel and small-states' diplomacy (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Jérémy Filet is the first monograph to fully examine the intersecting networks of Jacobites and travellers to the continent. In the book, Dr. Filet considers how small states used official diplomacy and deployed soft power - embodied by educational academies - to achieve foreign policy goals. This work uses little-known archival materials to explain how and why certain small

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43:52

Peter K. Andersson, "The Dandy: A People's History of...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/08/25

A history of the dandy from below, from Beau Brummell and Baudelaire to Bowie and Bolan... and beyond. The historical figure of the dandy has commonly been described as an upper-class gentleman, often exemplified by well-known men such as Beau Brummell, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and Max Beerbohm. But there is a broader history to be told about the dandy - one that incorporates unknown men from the lower strata of society. The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour (Oxford UP,

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64:55

Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria,...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/08/09

In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising story of how Algeria joined and then left the postwar European Economic Community and what its past inclusion means for extracontinental membership in today’s European Union.On their face, the mid-1950s negotiations over European integration were aimed at securing unity in order to prevent violent conflict and boost economies emerging from the disaster of

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72:02

Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018)

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/07/26

Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. 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. Why so? In the early summer of 1940, when France was overrun by German troops, one junior general who had fought in the trenches in Verdun refused to accept defeat. He fled to London, where he took to the radio to address his

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45:35

Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/07/06

An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childlessness in twentieth-century France (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Margaret Andersen explores fraught political and cultural meanings attached to the notion of an "ideal" family size. When statistics revealed a sustained drop in France's birthrate, pronatalist activists pushed for financial benefits, propaganda, and punitive measures to

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77:42

Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira, "Ascending...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/07/02

On August 27, 1783, a large crowd gathered in Paris to watch the first ascent of a hydrogen balloon. Despite the initial feverish enthusiasm, by the mid-nineteenth century the balloon remained relatively unchanged and was no longer seen as the harbinger of a new era. Yet that all changed in the last third of the century, when following the traumatic Franco-Prussian War defeat, the balloon reemerged to become the modern artifact that captured the attention of many. Through this process, the balloon

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45:13

Julie Singer, "Out of the Mouths of Babes: Infant...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/06/14

A wide-ranging study of the rich questions raised by speaking infants in medieval French literature.Medieval literature is full of strange moments when infants (even fetuses) speak. In Out of the Mouths of Babes: Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature, (U Chicago Press, 2025) Julie Singer explores the unsettling questions raised by these events, including What is a person? Is speech fundamental to our humanity? And what does it mean, or what does it matter, to speak truth to power?Singer

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78:18

Elise Franklin "Disintegrating Empire: Algerian...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/06/10

Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Elise Franklin whose first book, Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the Welfare State in France, was published by the University of Nebraska Press (2024). Distintegrating Empire examines the processes of decolonization through the intersecting histories of the French welfare state, family migration from Algeria to France, and the French social workers who mediated between the state and their Algerian clients. Franklin

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55:51

Selda Altan, "Chinese Workers of the World:...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/05/21

Chinese workers helped build the modern world. They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the construction of the Panama Canal, among many other projects. While most investigations of Chinese workers focus on migrant labor, Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway (Stanford UP, 2024) explores Chinese labor under colonial regimes within China through an examination of the Yunnan-Indochina Railway,

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49:02

William Jennings, "Dibia's World: Life on an Early...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/05/10

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and author of Dibia's World.: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation (Liverpool UP, 2023). William discusses the importance of names, voice and the community life of a hundred slaves on an early sugar plantation.Dibia's World follows the story of Dibia, an educated man in Africa, stolen across the sea and sold into slavery. He

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62:08

Marc Jaffré, "The Courtiers and the Court of Louis...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/05/07

Marc Jaffré joins Jana Byars for a lively conversation about The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610- 1643 (Oxford University Press, 2025). Louis XIII's court has long been a feature of the popular imaginary, thanks in part to the many movie and TV adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers. Yet it remains misunderstood, commonly mischaracterised as weak, unimportant, or wholly subservient to the whims of Louis XIII. Seeking to correct this narrative, Marc Jaffré here offers

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48:39

"I have not Finished...": Rokahya Diallo on being...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/05/02

Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokahya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo within a transnational black intellectual tradition, founded in the interwar period in the Negritude movement; it was then that Paulette, Jeanne, and Anne Nardal’s literary salon became a meeting ground for African, Antillean, and African-American intellectuals, in the Parisian suburb of Clamart.The three

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72:01

Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic...

New Books in French Studies ·

2025/04/23

Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-brother Sir Charles Stewart has received far less attention despite his own prominent part in the politics and diplomacy of those years. In War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era: Sir Charles Stewart, Castlereagh and the Balance of Power in Europe (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), Reider Payne describes the adventurous life of the third Marquess of

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553 results

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