From the Union sacrée to trench warfare, these sources have been effective in introducing to one of the most formative events of twentieth-century France: World War One (or “The Great War” as it was called before there was a second).…
It is often observed that the French model of integration differs greatly from the U.S. idea of multiculturalism, in both theory and practice. When the term “multiculturalism” even comes up in France, it is without fail with negative undertones, referring…
While living in France a few years ago, I found this old agenda in a pile of post-flea-market trash. Not knowing exactly what I had found, I picked it up along with some other books someone deemed no longer relevant.…
Film: Visite inaugurale du nouveau siège de Google France Google France opened a new headquarters in Paris today – an event which, interestingly, merited a press conference with none other than President Sarkozy and Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt. Given the rocky…
Throughout a course on 20th-century and contemporary France, I’ve been incorporating popular songs into our analysis of what it means to be French, from the post-war period to the present day. I’ve used music in a variety of ways: comparing…
Patrick Weil, a research fellow at the CNRS and also a former professor of mine, has just published an essay entitled Etre français, les quatre piliers de la nationalité (Editions de l’Aube, January 2011). Although I haven’t yet had the…
I was living in France in 1999-2000 when the millennium was all the rage. On the occasion of the turn of the new century (yes, a year early), I picked up a copy of a compilation CD called Les plus grandes…