Chief Editor
Gülru Çakmak, University of Massachusetts Amherst (gcakmak@umass.edu)
Associate Editors
Christine Adams, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Kate Griffiths, Cardiff University
Rebecca Scales, Rochester Institute of Technology
Originating in 2009, H-France Salon is a multimedia journal of French Studies in its broadest sense, encompassing history, literature, cinema, art history, theory, and culture. Salons have included debates and collective reassessments of critical, methodological, and professional issues in our fields, tributes to influential individuals, recordings of conference presentations, webinars, and innovative blog projects. We welcome proposals that build on these initiatives or take us in new directions. Please contact us with ideas. (gcakmak@umass.edu)
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.
A collection of similar papers, discussions, etc. published on H-France as “Occasional Papers” are available here.