H-France

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H-France is a scholarly organization promoting the study of French and Francophone history and culture online.  Since its origins in 1991, H-France has grown into a central source of scholarly information and publications related to French and Francophone history, literature, art history, musicology, film studies, and philosophy.  Publishing five open access journals and supporting a discussion list, a Scholars Registry, and a website, the H-France Editorial Team is composed of a large group of volunteers whose efforts are the heart and soul of its operations.

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H-France Digital Humanities Survey Report

The H-France Digital Humanities Committee has completed their bilingual survey of H-France members on how H-France might support Digital Humanities work in our fields. The survey results are now available at https://h-france.net/Dhsurvey/DHsurvey.pdf

Some possible ideas from the H-France community included commissioning and publishing reviews of DH projects in our fields, running seminars to introduce members of our community to current DH methods, hosting French and Francophone DH projects on H-France server space, and offering technical and editorial consultations for those already embarked on DH projects. To give us feedback or if you have any questions, please write to hfrance.dhcommittee@gmail.com.

Best wishes from the H-France DH Committee,

Michael Breen (H-France Editor-in-Chief, ex officio)

Melanie Conroy (University of Memphis & H-France Chief Web Editor)

Hélène Huet (University of Florida)

Kaiama Glover (Yale University)

Soraya Limare (Columbia University)

Stefano Milonia (Tübingen University)

Lynn Ramey (Vanderbilt University & H-France Digital Humanities Database Editor) 

Jeff Ravel (Chair, MIT)

In Memoriam – Chris Jones, H-France Review Chief Editor

It is with great sadness that H-France announces that Chris Jones, Associate Professor of Medieval History at the University of Canterbury (Aoteaora/New Zealand) and Chief Editor of H-France Review, has passed away suddenly while traveling in the United Kingdom. 

This news comes as a great shock. For the last few years, Chris was vital member of the H-France Review team, initially as a Placement Editor for medieval history before succeeding Lynne Taylor as Chief Editor of the Review last Fall. While Chris only served as Chief Editor for a short time, he had already established himself as an effective leader of H-France’s most active publication, displaying remarkable thoughtfulness, sound judgement, good humor, and notable efficiency in overseeing the Review and while serving on the H-France Editorial Board. 

Chris’s colleagues in Medieval Studies have praised his warm spirit; outstanding generosity; and exceptional qualities as a teacher, scholar, and advocate for his field–all of which echo my own experiences and those of others who worked with him on the Review. His passing is a terrible loss for the H-France community, as well as for his family and friends, his colleagues at the University of Canterbury, and the field of Medieval French history more broadly. 

Review publications will pause briefly to honor Chris’s memory.

Best Wishes,

Michael P. Breen, H-France Editor-in-Chief

Quadrennial Fundraiser: H-France Needs Your Help

Dear H-France Members:

H-France needs your help.  In the past, H-France has asked for your financial support for its operations, and we have been honored by your generosity. Your gifts have helped, and continue to help, H-France sustain it operations in book reviewing; forums; salons; reviews of films, novels, and other media; and the discussion list. They have also helped us expand our operations into new areas, such as the creation of a Research Repository that makes archival materials accessible for research and the Digital Humanities Database. We believe that the value of H-France’s operations has become increasingly evident in the recent years as we have helped to sustain contact among thousands of members across the globe through online conferences, webinars, and the recording of conference sessions.

This week we are launching our quadrennial fundraiser and making a new request for your financial assistance. The fundraiser will take place over the course of the next month, and we hope that many of you will be able to help support H-France’s continuing and future operations.  

H-France’s greatest cost is undoubtedly borne by our roughly 130 volunteer editors, who offer their time and talents to H-France as a collaborative enterprise. Real monetary costs remain, however. These include mailing fees for the book review program (which have increased in recent years), expenses for the web site and other digital resources, and costs as we plan for the future (with projects such as our newly-announced Digital Humanities Initiative) and the ever-changing realities for digital technologies. We work diligently to keep our costs modest so that we do not need to ask frequently for donations and so that we can continue to offer all of our publications as Open Access, making them freely available online.  

There are 4 ways to make a donation to H-France, all of which can be found below: 

H-FRANCE DONATION INSTRUCTIONS:

There are 4 ways to make a donation to H-France, all of which start on the H-France Donation Page at https://h-france.net/support-h-france/

• By personal check made out to H-France and mailed to the address on the H-France Donation Page (https://h-france.net/support-h-france/)

• By Venmo. Send your payment to @H-France. Please include the word “donation” in the “what is it for?” line. [NB: This option is only available in the United States]

• By one-time payment through H-France’s account at PayPal. You can easily donate with a Visa/CB, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express card, or your own PayPal account. The PayPal server is secure, and you do not need to have a PayPal account in order to use this donation method if you are donating with a credit card or carte bancaire. Just take these steps:
  
• On the H-France Main Page (below the sidebar menu) or the Donation Page listed above, click on the “Donate” button to be taken to PayPal’s donation page.
• Indicate the amount of your donation and then click to indicate your payment option (own PayPal account or debit/credit card) and be taken to the payment page.
• On the payment page, enter payment information (if you are on the debit/credit card page, make sure that you select the correct nation at the top of the page).

• If you prefer to make an automatic, recurring monthly donation via PayPal rather than a one-time gift, follow the instructions above for one-time payment, but check the Monthly Donation box that appears on the PayPal donation and payment pages. You will need a PayPal account for this option and can easily set one up while selecting this option.

All donations are tax deductible under U.S. law as H-France is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit educational organization. Donors will receive an acknowledgement email from H-France.

Thank you in advance for your generosity,

Michael P. Breen, H-France Editor-in-Chief

H-France Digital Humanities Survey

The newly-formed H-France DH Committee would like to hear from you!  How can H-France best support the DH work of its members?  To solicit your advice, we have created a short, bilingual survey that should take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete.  You can now access the survey, which will be open for one month beginning today.

In addition, H-France subscribers attending the annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies this month are invited to attend a roundtable discussion we have organized entitled “How Should H-France Support Digital Humanities Work? A Community Conversation.” The session will take place on Thursday, March 14, from 4 to 5:45 PM.

We are anxious to learn more about your DH needs!  We look forward to hearing from you via the survey and at the SFHS conference later this month.

Best wishes from the H-France DH Committee,

Michael Breen (ex officio)

Melanie Conroy 

Hélène Huet

Stefano Milonia

Lynn Ramey

Jeff Ravel (Chair)

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Sondage Humanités Numériques H-France

Le nouveau comité de H-France sur les humanités numériques aimerait solliciter vos idées. Comment H-France pourrait-il mieux soutenir le travail en HN de ses membres ? Pour tenir compte de vos conseils, nous avons créé un court sondage bilingue qui ne devrait pas prendre plus de 5 à 10 minutes à compléter. Vous pouvez accéder au sondage dès à présent, sondage qui restera ouvert un mois à partir d’aujourd’hui.

De plus, les abonnés H-France qui assisteront au colloque annuel de la Society for French Historical Studies ce mois-ci sont invités à participer à une table ronde que nous avons organisée intitulée “Comment H-France devrait-il soutenir le travail des humanités numériques? Une conversation communautaire.” La séance aura lieu le jeudi 14 mars, de 16h à 17h45.

Nous sommes impatients d’en apprendre davantage sur vos besoins en matière de HN ! Nous attendons vos réponses via le sondage et lors de la conférence SFHS plus tard ce mois-ci.

Cordialement,

Michael Breen (ex officio)

Melanie Conroy 

Hélène Huet

Stefano Milonia

Lynn Ramey

Jeff Ravel 

Discussion List Restored (4 Jan.)

The University of Akron has resolved the problems with the Discussion List and it should soon begin to function as normal. However, messages submitted for moderation on or after 21 Dec. 2023 may have been lost. Anyone who submitted a message after 21 Dec. is encouraged to resubmit it. Similarly, anyone who submitted a listing for the Housing Digest after that date is encouraged to resubmit it at their earliest convenience. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or Christi Brookes, the Discussion List Chief Editor.

Michael P. Breen, H-France Editor-in-Chief  

Discussion List Outage (2 Jan. 2024)

Dear colleagues,

For the past several days, the University of Akron has been experiencing problems with its mailing list operations. As a result of these problems, messages are not being distributed to email discussion lists, including H-France. Akron’s IT office is aware of the problem and is working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

For the moment, what this means is that the H-France Discussion List can receive submissions, but our moderators cannot distribute them. We hope to distribute messages that have been submitted as soon as the problem is resolved. However, it is possible that some messages submitted to the discussion list may have been lost. If you submitted a message on or after 21 December 2023 and it does not appear once Discussion List operations resume, please contact me or Christi Brookes, the Chief Discussion List Editor.

With apologies for the inconvenience these technical difficulties may have caused, and with best wishes for a bonne année 2024.

Michael P. Breen, H-France Editor-in-Chief

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Discussion List Update (14 Oct. 2023)

I am pleased to report that the University of Akron has largely completed the maintenance work on the H-France Discussion List. Email commands should work once again for subscribing and unsubscribing to the list. The DIGEST function, which allows subscribers to group a day’s messages into a single email, has also been restored. Further information on how to manage this and other settings will be forthcoming soon. In the meantime, please consult the relevant H-France Discussion List page for further information about how to manage your account settings if necessary.

As part of the maintenance work, Akron resolved several issues that were preventing many subscribers from receiving our messages. Many users have reported that their service has been restored. Unfortunately, it appears that some subscribers may have had their accounts deleted in the process. If you believe that you are subscribed and have not been receiving Discussion List emails recently, please try to resubscribe using the instructions linked to above.

H-France is grateful to the University of Akron for its continued support of the Discussion List and its efforts to maintain and upgrade the SYMPA software used to manage it.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or need further assistance.

Michael P. Breen, H-France Editor-in-Chief

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Chris Jones Succeeds Lynne Taylor as New Chief Editor of H-France Review

After more than two decades of service to H-France Review, including nearly seven years as Chief Editor, Lynne Taylor will be stepping down as Chief Editor of the Review on 15 October 2023. Lynne’s many contributions to the Review defy description, but it is enough to note that she has been indispensable in helping make H-France Review a leading publication for reviews of recent books on Francophone history and culture. The Review now publishes more than 200 reviews annually, providing extended scholarly analysis of current research in history, literature, art history, music history, film studies, history of science, and philosophy. Over the course of its history, H-France Review has published more than 4,000 reviews, all of which are freely available to scholars, teachers, and other interested parties online at https://h-france.net/h-france-review/. 

Since taking over as Chief Editor of H-France Review at the beginning of 2017, Lynne has provided steady and expert leadership, overseeing a team of roughly sixty volunteer editors who communicate with presses, recruit reviewers, manage the editorial process, and publish reviews online, all with admirable skill, tact, wisdom, and good humor. Lynne’s efforts have been a key reason why the Review has been able to maintain its impressive level of activity even during the many uncertainties and disruptions of the past few years. Moreover, Lynne’s service to H-France has extended well beyond the Review. She served on the Editor-in-Chief Search Committee that recruited David K. Smith’s successor and has provided considerable insight and sage advice as a member of the H-France Editorial Board. 

In light of these contributions, I am pleased to announce that the Editorial Board has awarded Lynne the David Kammerling Smith Distinguished Service Award, making her only the second person in H-France’s history to receive this award more than once. After stepping down as Chief Editor, Lynne will continue to serve as Assistant Editor at the Review for the next two years. Once this term of service is complete, the H-France Editorial Board has also voted to honor Lynne with the title of H-France Editor Emerita in recognition of her lengthy and extraordinary service to H-France.  

To maintain and build upon Lynne’s legacy, I am delighted to announce that the H-France Editorial Board has approved the nomination of Professor Chris Jones of the University of Canterbury (Aotearoa New Zealand) to become the new Chief Editor of H-France Review, effective 15 October 2023. A specialist of medieval French history and the history of political thought, Professor Jones is the author and co-editor of several books including Eclipse of Empire? Perceptions of the Western Empire and its Rulers in Late Medieval France (Brepols, 2007), Making the Medieval Relevant: How Medieval Studies Contributes to Improving our Understanding of the Present (De Gruyter, 2020), and Rethinking Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought: Historiographical Problems, Fresh Interpretations, New Debates (Routledge, 2023), as well as numerous articles, book chapters, and other publications. Having served as President of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Associate Dean at the University of Canterbury, and Placement Editor for medieval history at H-France Review, as well as on a number of editorial and advisory boards, Chris brings a wealth of administrative experience, editorial expertise, and enthusiasm to the position. While we will all miss working with Lynne greatly, we are equally excited to begin collaborating with Chris and eager to start the next chapter of H-France Review’s history under his leadership. 

On behalf of the entire H-France community, I would like to express my deepest and most profound gratitude to Lynne for nearly seven years of peerless leadership of the Review, as well as our thanks to Chris for taking on this vitally important role. I look forward to working with him to maintain and build upon H-France Review’s legacy in the years to come. 

Michael P. Breen, H-France Editor-in-Chief

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Gülru Çakmak Succeeds Patrick Bray as the New Chief Editor of H-France Salon

It is my great pleasure to inform you that the H-France Editorial Board has approved the nomination of Gülru Çakmak, Associate Professor in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to succeed Patrick Bray as the Chief Editor of H-France Salon. A specialist of 18th & 19th-century French, English, and Ottoman art, Prof. Çakmak is the author of Jean-Léon Gérôme and the Crisis of History Painting in the 1850s (Liverpool UP, 2017), which examines the period when traditional history painting lost its status as a compelling mode of representation. More recently, Prof. Çakmak is working on two new projects: Materiality, Process and Facture in English and French Sculpture at the End of the Nineteenth-Century and Osman Hamdi and the Long Duration of History. Since 2020, she has also served as Associate Editor of H-France Salon and, with Jennifer Heuer, edited the Salon special issue on “Rethinking Race & Representation in Art History & Material Culture of the 18th- and 19th-Century Francosphere.” (vol. 14, issue 8). Prof. Çakmak’s keen sensitivity to historical questions, interdisciplinary approach to visual culture, and interests in the ways French and francophone cultures intersect with other cultures and societies, make her well-suited to lead H-France Salon and build on the legacy of Prof. Bray’s editorship. 

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Patrick Bray for his outstanding leadership of H-France Salon since 2018. During this time, Prof. Bray has overseen the publication of 76 issues with 354 individual items, expanding the scope of the Salon‘s activities and cementing its place as the preeminent online multimedia journal of French studies. Under his guidance, the Salon has been at the forefront of H-France’s responses to recent events, helping to host conferences that were moved online due to the coronavirus pandemic (i.e. Rudé/SFHS 2020, SSFH 2021) as well as new online programs such as SFHS’s French Presse and Nineteenth-Century French Studies’ NCFS Unbound! series. A number of special issues on race and racism in the study of France and the Francophone world, meanwhile, have contributed to a critical reexamination of our fields, helping to foster important conversations about the present and the future. Prof. Bray has also been generous with advice and support as a member of the Editorial Board, and I have been grateful for his insights and comments. 

On behalf of H-France, I would like to thank Patrick for everything he has done during these past several years, and to welcome Gülru as the new Chief Editor of H-France Salon.

Michael P. Breen, H-France Editor-in-Chief

H-France Discussion List Issues

Dear colleagues – I have heard from some members of the discussion list that they have not been receiving H-France emails. It appears that this is due to the fact that some institutions’ security settings are blocking emails from our server at the University of Akron. We hope this will be resolved soon. In the meantime, if you find that you are not receiving emails from the Discussion List, please let me know. My apologies for the inconvenience.

Update: We have been informed by the University of Akron that the pending upgrade that has been responsible for these issues should be completed by the first week of January 2023.

Further Update (Jan. 10, 2023):

The major upgrade implemented by the University of Akron seems to have had some unexpected consequences. Individualized settings (Digest, No Mail, etc) appear to have reverted to default. Thus, if you have started receiving individual messages instead of a daily digest, or suddenly started receiving messages again out of the blue, that is why. It also appears that some former subscribers may have started receiving messages once again. Akron is aware of these issues and is working to resolve them. H-France apologies to those who have been receiving unwanted emails. We are endeavoring to correct the situation as quickly as we can and ask for your patience while we work through these issues. 

If you have attempted to unsubscribe using the instructions on the H-France website and have received an error message, please let me know by contacting me directly. Please do not send requests to unsubscribe by replying to a discussion list message or by sending a message to h-france@lists.uakron.edu, as these go into the moderation queue for the list and must be rejected by the moderator, which is both cumbersome for us to manage and results in the generation of an automatic message to the original sender that might be confusing in the current circumstances. If you write to me directly with your request, I can work with Akron to make sure that it is processed. Please do note that it may take a couple of days for your request to go through, but it will be handled as quickly as possible. 

Akron’s IT staff has indicated that things might be bumpy for a bit, but we hope to have a much fuller ability to manage the list by early next week. At that point, people should be able to restore their individual preferences and manage their subscriptions with greater ease. 

Once again, my apologies to everyone for the inconvenience. We hope to have regular (and even improved) service restored in the coming days. 

Michael P. Breen, H-France Editor-in-Chief

 

Dear H-France Members:

I am thrilled to launch publicly today the H-France Research Repository.  The Research Repository holds copies of digital photographs taken by scholars at libraries and archives and information on microfilm reels in H-France’s possession to be lent out for research. These resources are made available due to the generosity of the scholars who took the photos and commissioned the microfilms from national, departmental, and municipal archives.  The Research Repository may be accessed at https://h-france.net/h-france-research-repository/.

We wish to express our great admiration to the thousands of archivists and librarians whose work is central to researchers. The materials made available here can never replace archival research or the joys of discovery working though books and boxes, but we do hope that it can aid and sustain those researchers unable to travel to such institutions.

As the Research Repository is designed for use by scholars and their students, the materials are organized by their archival codes.  When possible, we have also included links to online indices for specific archival series.  Archival materials for which an entire folio or box was photographed or microfilmed in its entirety are listed as “complet.”  Archival materials for which only selected pages or items material were photographed or microfilmed are listed as “en partie.”

These materials are made available without charge and in terms of the laws governing and set by the institutions holding the original documents. We have been in contact with the Service interministériel des Archives de France as well as with individual archives to ensure that these materials may be offered through this repository.  We have endeavored to exclude from the Research Repository material which is not publicly available under the laws and policies governing such material or which require special permission for consultation (such as a dérogation).  If material is found in the Research Repository which should not be included, we will quickly remove the material once informed.  Please contact the Research Repository Editor David Kammerling Smith at dksmith@eiu.edu.

We very much wish to continue to add to the Research Repository.  In fact, we have more material which we will be adding in the coming days and weeks.  We would very much welcome additional donations of photographs and microfilms.  If you have material to donate, please contact the Research Repository Directory at the email address above.  The richer the repository, the more useful it will be for researchers and for students.  There are presently several tens of thousands of photos available.  We would love for that to become hundreds of thousands.

Finally, a particular thanks to Claire Lemercier for her assistance and advice in developing the project.  Her contacts and knowledge of the laws affecting archival material have been invaluable.  And further thanks to Billy Davis and Sergio Vlahovich, who undertook much of the work building and developing the website.

David Kammerling Smith
H-France Editor-in-Chief and Research Repository Editor