Announcements
Call for Papers: 50th Annual Conference, San Francisco, California
The fiftieth annual conference of the Western Society for French History will be held from November 14-17, 2024 in San Francisco, where, legend has it, the idea for the Western was cooked up in 1973. The theme for this year’s conference is “Pasts, Presents, and Publics.” The organizers hope to highlight the many ways that historians speak to issues of contemporary importance, as well as the relationship between the public sphere and the history of France and the Francophone world.
Deadline for proposals is May 1, 2024. Check out the Conference Page for more details.
Tyler Stovall WSFH MIssion Prize: Call for Nominations
The Western Society for French History (WSFH) seeks nominations for the Society’s Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize. The prize honors the courageous scholarship, generous mentorship and collaboration, and unparalleled, unpretentious passion and insight that Dr. Tyler Stovall brought to the field. In that spirit, the prize recognizes and celebrates the work of those actively committed to achieving equity and inclusion in the production and transmission of knowledge about the history of the French and Francophone world.
Nominations, including self-nominations, should include the nominee’s name, position, contact information, and a brief (150-word) rationale and be submitted to wsfhmissionprize@wsfh.org by 31 March 2024. All nominees will be asked to submit a cover letter and a CV.
Questions may be directed to wsfhmissionprize@wsfh.org. More information on the prize, required materials, and process can be found here.
Millstone fellowship: Call for Applications
The Millstone Fellowship provides $5000 for research in France (which includes the DOM-TOM, now known as DROM-COM). Eligibility is restricted to doctoral students, untenured and adjunct faculty members, and independent scholars who reside in North America and whose research related to French and Francophone history and culture requires work in archives, libraries, or other repositories in France. Preference is given to doctoral students and scholars in the early stages of their careers who show demonstrated need.
For more details, see the fellowship page linked above. Due Date: March 15, 2024
Latest Issue of the Journal of the Western Society for French History now available
Volume 49 of the Journal of the Western Society for French History has been published. This volume sees the journal adopt its new format. Check it out here: https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/wsfh/issue/240/info/
Welcome, New Council Members!
2024 brings a slate of new WSFH Council Members, elected this past fall. Please give a warm welcome to Libby Murphy (Georgia College), Liz Tuttle (Michigan State), Jakob Burnham (University of North Texas), Eleanor Rivera (Murray State University), Brooke Durham (West Virginia University), Meredith Scott (US Air Force Academy), Liz Fink (Institute of French Studies, NYU), Drew Flanagan (Pitt-Bradford), and Angela Haas (Western Missouri State).
Many thanks to our outgoing Council Members for their service!
Call for Papers: Journal of the WSFH
The Journal of the Western Society for French History (JWSFH) invites submissions for its 2024 issue. JWSFH publishes single and collectively authored article-length pieces (4000-6000 words) that deal with all periods and subject areas of French and Francophone history, as well as clusters of articles that speak to a common theme.Authors interested in submitting articles longer than 6000 words should reach out to the editors in advance. We also welcome “Interventions” responding to emerging and developing events in the Francophone world (2000-2500 words); “Notes on Sources” (800-1000 words); multimedia projects; roundtables; conversations, etc. Given that WSFH will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024, we especially encourage submissions that address the society’s past, present, and/or future in a meaningful way.
The deadline for submission is March 1, 2024. View the full call for papers here, and visit the journal page for more details.
2023 Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize Winner and Finalists Announced
A crucial part of the WSFH’s mission is to help foster an educational community that is actively committed to achieving equity and inclusion in the production and transmission of knowledge about the francophone world. To that end, the Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize recognizes teachers and scholars who are doing outstanding work to combat structural inequalities in the field of French/Francophone History, in the profession, in their home institutions, and beyond. By celebrating individuals who are developing tools and practices that challenge inequity, oppression, and discrimination, not only through research but also through teaching, mentoring, and professional leadership, the Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize proudly signals the Western’s belief that such work is an essential part of what it means to be an exemplary citizen, scholar, and educator.
This year’s winner is Dr. Laura Talamante, a Professor of History at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who teaches courses in European and Women’s History and whose research focuses on issues of human rights and social justice. Dr. Talamante builds connections across a broad range of groups, involving her students, colleagues, and the wider community in scholarly discussions about historical discrimination and oppression through film festivals, student-led research and authorship, community-service learning, workshops, and more. In addition to being an accomplished researcher and author, Dr. Talamante is an engaged member of her community and a dedicated mentor of undergraduate and graduate students alike. She is also a leader on her campus and in her university system, and she is an outspoken advocate for gender equity, racial justice, and mutual cultural understanding.
The three finalists this year include Dr. Tekla Babyak, Dr. Preeti Bhutani, and Dr. Gina Ulysse. The committee was particularly impressed by Dr. Babyak's analysis of the works of composers through the lens of disability and embodiment, as well as her persuasive argument for extending the French musical canon. In terms of Dr. Bhutani's portfolio, the committee was impressed by the depth and breadth of her engagement with French language learners and teachers in India and beyond, as well as the community-building and profile-raising her organization has accomplished for French instructors in India. With respect to Dr. Ulysse, the committee was impressed by her work as an educator, an artist and a public intellectual who sees mentoring as “the long road of freedom and liberation."
Each of our finalists has made, and continues to make, invaluable contributions to French and Francophone study across the globe. Please join me in congratulating them.
Many thanks as well to the Mission Prize committee members who have done so much to evaluate such a profoundly inspiring pool of applicants.
Paper Prize and Fellowship Winners Announced
The WSFH is pleased to announce the winners for its 2022 and 2023 Paper Prizes.
For the Millstone Prize for best interdisciplinary paper:
Hannah Stamler (Princeton), “Le plus bel enfant de la France: Beauty Competitions and the Formation of Model Children in Interwar France.” (2022, Victoria)
Elise Franklin (University of Louisville), “Abduction in the Archives.” (2023, Detroit)
For the Ronald S. Love Prize for the best graduate student paper on the history of France and/or its colonies and the Francophone world before 1800:
Caroline Hackett (Florida State University), “Wielding Wealth: Married Women, Property, and Public Power in Old Regime Languedoc.” (2022, Victoria)
Hayley Rucker (UC-Berkeley), “Thrown to the Sea: Death and Belonging Aboard Ship, 1680-1793.” (2023, Detroit)
For the Edward T. Gargan Prize for the best graduate student paper on post-1800 history of France and/or its colonies and the Francophone world:
Sarah Miles (UNC-Chapel Hill), “‘Il y a des livres qui liberent’: Albert Memmi and Revolutionary Anticolonialism in Partis Pris” (2022, Victoria)
Paige Pendarvis (University of Pennsylvania), ““Economic Humanism at the UN: Father Louis-Joseph Lebret and the 1954 UN Report on Standards of Living” (2023, Detroit)
In case you missed it, we would like to congratulate the winners of the 2023 WSFH Fellowships and travel award:
For the 2023 Millstone Fellowship:
Joao Gabriel (John Hopkins), “Between the State and Capital: Prison Reform, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Imperial Nation-State (1830-1851)”
Alice Kwok (UW-Madison), “The Norse Revival in Nineteenth-Century France”
For the 2023 joint WSFH-SFHS Research Travel Award:
Abigail Lewis (Notre Dame), “Double Exposure: French Photography and Everyday Choices From Nazi Occupation to Liberation”
We thank all of our colleagues who submitted papers this year. We had an abundance of excellent work to read, and you gave the committee much to think about and much to enjoy. Likewise, we would like to thank the members of our prize committees, who put considerable work into selecting from among the numerous excellent submissions.
Statement on the Ongoing Protests in France and on Affirmative action
The Western Society for French History mourns the death of Nahel M., among other things a French adolescent of Algerian descent, seventeen, a son, a rugby player, and a delivery driver, who is the latest victim of police violence in France. With little concrete information yet in hand, media, like during the protests of 2005, have turned to describing France as “on fire” or “burning,” whereas politicians have been blaming urban youth culture, parenting, or lack of assimilation in conjunction with immigration. As for those who have taken to the streets yet again, they see themselves in the policing of Nahel M.’s “Arab,” “Muslim,” or “foreign” body. We, however, are a society of scholars, many of whom study events and spaces throughout history that have produced the conditions for mass protests in France and other Francophone spaces such as the ones that have taken over so many banlieues, cités, streets, and other urban spaces these past days. We honor Nahel M.’s life, and countless other lives lost before his, as well as those who recognize themselves in those lives, by persisting in our investigation of the histories of places such as Nanterre as well as the formations of colonialism, racism, and other systems that have and continue to shape French and Francophone spaces and the experiences of people living within them.
As historians, we cannot help but link the continuing unwillingness of French leaders to acknowledge the contemporary effects of histories of colonialism and racist violence to the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling Affirmative Action to be unconstitutional. In both instances, a willful “colorblindness” regarding race has led to an unwillingness to face the lasting damages of systemic racism in both societies. As historians and scholars, we have documented the lasting legacy of racism in contemporary education, policing, housing, and other social arenas. These histories must remain available and taught to students in libraries and schools. And so we call on politicians, judges, and others with public responsibilities on both sides of the Atlantic to take into account these histories as they develop policies that might lead to a more equitable world.
WSFH 2023 Millstone Research Fellowship Winners
We are happy to announce the 2023 Amy Millstone Research Fellowship winners. This year's fellowships have been awarded to:
Joao Gabriel, PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins University, for "Between the State and Capital: Prison Reform, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Imperial Nation-State (1830-1851)"
Alice Kwok, PhD Candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for "The Norse Revival in Nineteenth-Century France." Toutes nos félicitations to both.
The Millstone Fellowship provides $5,000 for research in France, including the DROM-COM. More information can be found here. The prize committee thanks everyone who submitted their work. The Western Society for French History is grateful for the support of donors who have made these awards possible, particularly Chris Gargan, Mae and David Millstone, any everyone who donated to the 'Millstone Match' fundraising campaign over the past year.
The Bridges Project
engagé.e.s. is excited to announce an initiative launching in 2023 aimed at opening up dialogue, resources, and options for our community. Our goals are twofold:
To provide resources for people trained or training in French and Francophone history who wish to explore any career options or transitions.
To create bridges between people trained in French and Francophone history in the name of personal fulfillment, professional growth, and public value.
Information about events, resources, and opportunities will be posted online here, as well as circulated through various French history channels, broadly conceived.
If you want to learn more about the Bridges Project, to join in, or have ideas, please write to us: Nimisha Barton (nbarton1@uci.edu) & Sarah Griswold (sarah.griswold@okstate.edu)
DONATE
Please consider donating money to support the Society’s efforts to support graduate students’ scholarship, research, and conference participation.