Volume 17, Issue 6
Western Society for French History 50th Annual Conference: November 16, 2024
Panel 7D – Activism and Art in the Third and Fifth Republics
Chair:
Daniel Sherman (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Participants:
Jonathyne Briggs (Indiana University Northwest): “Sonic Protest: Music, Therapy, and Self-Expression as forms of Autistic Activism”
Roxanne Panchasi (Simon Fraser University): “The Work of Art in the Age of French Nuclear-Imperial Destruction”
Nikki Georgopulos (University of British Columbia): “National Identities and the Politics of Dislocation at the 1874 Exposition Alsacien-Lorrain”
Volume 17, Issue 5
Western Society for French History 50th Annual Conference: November 16, 2024
Panel 6E – Revolution, Religion, and the State
Comment:
Mita Choudhury (Vassar College)
Participants:
Katie Jarvis (University of Notre Dame): “Jurisdiction over Souls: Contesting Confession in the French Revolution”
Ian Coller (University of California, Irvine): “The Republican Koran: Islam and the Directory 1795-1799”
Corinne Gressang (Slippery Rock University): “Searching for Sacrality in the Late Directory and Early Consulate Period”
Volume 17, Issue 4
Western Society for French History 50th Annual Conference: November 15, 2024
Session 3 – Ned Newman Memorial Plenary – “African Cultural Heritage in Museums: Circulation, Display, Return, and Restitution”
Moderator:
John Monroe (Iowa State University)
Participants:
Gaëlle Beaujean (Curator for African Collections, Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris)
Natasha Becker (Curator of African Art, de Young Museum, San Francisco)
Volume 17, Issue 3
Western Society for French History 50th Annual Conference: November 15, 2024
Panel 2G – Food and Identity in Modern France
Chair:
Robin Walz (University of Alaska Southeast)
Participants:
Kelly Colvin (University of Massachusetts, Boston): “Food Police: Culinary Interactions between Assistantes sociales and Immigrant Women in Late Twentieth-Century France”
John P. Murphy (Gettysburg College): “Frozen Food and Fat Fears: Weighing in on Cultural Identity and Economic Change in France, 1960s-2000”
Lynn L. Sharp (Whitman College): “Changing Cheese: The State and Dairy Production in Mid-Twentieth-century France”
Volume 17, Issue 2
Western Society for French History 50th Annual Conference: November 15, 2024
Panel 1A – Roundtable: Gendering French History: The Significance of Karen Offen’s Books on the Woman Question
Chair:
Linda L. Clark (Millersville University)
Participants:
Daniella J. Kostroun (Indiana University Indianapolis)
Elinor A. Accampo (University of Southern California)
Sara L. Kimble (DePaul University)
Jean E. Pedersen (University of Rochester)
Volume 17, Issue 1
The Myth of French Taste
Edited by:
Oliver Wunsch, Boston College
The concept of goût français has been central to French national identity since at least the late seventeenth century, yet the centuries since have yielded no clear consensus on its meaning. Does “French taste” signify the cosmopolitanism of a nation whose defining feature is its role as a cultural crossroads? Or does it name the very quality that shields France from foreign influence and the pressures of globalization?
The essays in this special issue of H-France Salon show how the idea of French taste has, for over three hundred years, mediated between these opposing visions of France’s place in the world. From the luxury trades of the ancien régime to postwar debates over abstraction, “French taste” has been invoked as a unifying principle precisely when the conception of France itself was most in flux. Yet a closer look at its history reveals the limits of its power to reconcile the antipodes of cosmopolitan universalism and nationalistic chauvinism.
“The Vexations of French Taste”
Oliver Wunsch, Boston College
“French Taste, Absolutism, and Economic Competition in the Eighteenth Century”
Natacha Coquery, University of Lyon 2, LARHRA
“From le Goût Universel to le Goût de Terroir: “French Taste” in Modern Gastronomic Discourse”
Benjamin Poole, Texas Tech University
“Was (and is) “French fashion” Just a Myth?“
Sophie Kurkdjian, American University of Paris
“Toying with Taste: Play and Aesthetic Education in Modern France“
Shana Cooperstein, School of Humanities, IE University
“Expressionist Abstraction and the Tradition Française“
Linda Stratford, Asbury University
“Globalizing French Luxury: The Comité Colbert and L’Art de Vivre, 1983-2025“
Grace Allen, The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California