Twentieth Century France (G46. 1620)

Edward Berenson
Spring 2006
Institute of French Studies
15 Washington Mews
Edward.berenson@nyu.edu
(212) 998-8792
Office Hours: Thurs 4-6

                       Twentieth Century France (G46. 1620)

        This semester we will consider the history of France from the late nineteenth century
to the present. The course begins with the the Dreyfus Affair, whose anti-Semitic excesses set
the stage for later events. The First World War brought France to the brink of destruction,
after which leading commentators noted profound social and cultural change, especially in
gender relations. The French empire reached its height in the 1930s, a decade that saw the
resurgence of extremist politics. An uneasy coalition of the left (the Popular Front) attempted
to return the country to a republican course. But the long Third Republic (1870-1940)
ultimately succumbed to a new German invasion. The fall of France produced the Vichy
regime, which proved to be one of the most difficult chapters in modern French history. The
Second World War marked the beginning of the end of European colonialism, and the
national liberation movement in Algeria (1954-62) took its place in both the decolonization
struggles of the post-war period and the Cold War. Charles De Gaulle succeeded in ending
the Algerian War, but not without helping to create the conditions of a student and worker
revolt in 1968. That revolt occurred near the end of a long period of economic expansion in
which the French government and business leaders encouraged the immigration of French-
speaking men from the former colonies. Those immigrants challenged France’s longstanding
“Republican model” of integration and produced a variety of reactions—republican, Islamic,
multiculturalist, and xenophobic. The course concludes with France’s startling political
innovation: the law of June 6, 2000 requiring equal numbers of women and men in elective
office.

        Beyond the weekly readings, assignments will include two analytical essays, the first
of 5-6 pages, the second 12-15. You will receive suggested topics for the first paper, and you
will choose your own topic for the second. In addition, each member of the seminar will
write one short summary of a week’s readings for presentation to the class. For each
seminar, a group of three participants will work together to prepare the summary and to open
the class discussion.

       The course texts, available at the NYU bookstore, are listed below, as are a number of
general books on 20th century France. The latter are for your information; they’re not
required for the course. Under each week, there are required readings followed by a list of
additional materials, which you may find useful in preparing your written work.

Required Texts:

*Charles Robert Ageron, Modern Algeria : a History from 1830 to the present (Trenton, NJ:
Africa World Press, 1991)
*Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins (New York: Norton, 1999).
*Michael Burns, ed., France and the Dreyfus Affair (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000).
*Philippe Burrin, France under the Germans: Collaboration and Compromise (New York:
New Press, 1996)
*Matthew James Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and
the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)
*Andrew Feenberg and Jim Freedman, When Poetry Ruled the Streets: The French May
Events of 1968 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001)
*Mouloud Feraoun, Journal, 1955-1962: Reflections on the French-Algerian War (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2000)
*Françoise Gaspard, A Small City in France: A Socialist Mayor Confronts Neo-Fascism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
*Julian Jackson, Charles de Gaulle (London: Haus Publishing, 2003)
*Julian Jackson, The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy (1934-1938) (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
*Brian Jenkins, France in the Era of Fascism: Essays on the French Authoritarian Right
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2005)
*Patricia A. Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931
Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003)
*Jeremy D. Popkin, A History of Modern France, 2nd Edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 2000).
*Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France
1917-1927 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
*Joan Wallach Scott, Parité! Sexual equality and the Crisis of French universalism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2005)
*Leonard V. Smith, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, and Annette Becker, France and the Great
War, 1914-1918 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

General Readings on 20th Century France

*Maurice Agulhon, La France de 1940 à nos jours (Paris, 1984); Agulhon, La Republique de
Jules Ferry à François Mitterrand: de 1880 a nos jours (Paris: 1990)
*Raymond Aron, Mémoires. 50 ans de réflexion politique (Paris, 1983)
*Jean-Jacques Becker and Gilles Candar, Histoire des gauches en France (2004)
*Herrick Chapman and Laura Frader, eds. Race in France. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on
the Politics of Difference (New York, 2004)
*Vincent Duclert and Christophe Prochasson, eds. Dictionnaire critique de la République
(Paris, 2002)
*Raoul Girardet, L’idée coloniale en France (Paris: 1972)

*Gerard Grunberg and Alain Bergounioux, L’ambition et le remords: Les socialistes français
et le pouvoir, 1905-2005 (Paris, 2005)
*Colin Jones, Paris. The Biography of a City (New York, 2005)
*Dominique Kalifa, La culture de masse en France (Paris, 2001)
*Laurence Klejman and Florence Rochefort, L' egalité en marche : le féminisme sous la
Troisième République (1989)
*Claude Liauzu, ed. Colonisation: droit d’inventaire (Paris: 2004)
*Gilert Menier and Jacques Thobie, Histoire de la France coloniale (Paris, 1991)
*Pierre Nora, ed. Les Lieux de Memoire (English Trans: Realms of Memory) 3 vols. (Paris:
1984-92)
*Nouvelle Histoire de la France Contemporaine, vols. 10-20 (Paris, 1973-94)
* Susan Groag Bell & Karen M. Offen, eds. Women, the Family, and Freedom: the Debate in
Documents (New York, 1983)
*Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, eds. Les intellectuels en France de l'Affaire Dreyfus à
nos jours (Paris, 1986)
*Antoine Prost and Gérard Vincent, eds. A History of Private Life, Vol V (Cambridge MA,
1991)
*Jean-Pierre Rioux and Jean-Francois Sirinelli, eds. Pour une histoire culturelle (Paris, 1997);
Rioux and Sirinelli, eds. La culture de masse en France de la Belle Epoque à aujourd’hui
(Paris, 2002); Rioux and Sirinelli, eds. Histoire culturelle de la France (Paris, 1997)
*Pierre Rosanvallon, Le sacre du citoyen: histoire du suffrage universel en France
(Paris, 1992); Rosanvallon, L'Etat en France de 1789 à nos jours (Paris, 1990); Rosanvallon,
Le peuple introuvable: histoire de la représentation démocratique en France (Paris, 1998);
Rosanvallon, La démocratie inachevée: histoire de la souveraineté du peuple en France
(Paris, 2000); Rosanvallon, Le modèle politique français: la société civile contre le
jacobinisme de 1789 à nos jours (Paris, 2004)
*Jean-François Sirinelli, ed. Dictionnaire historique de la vie politique française au XXe siècle
(Paris, 1995)
*Michel Winock, La fièvre hexagonale. Les grandes crises politiques, 1871-1968 (Paris,
1987)

**Denotes material on reserve

Week I. (Jan. 17) Introduction: France in the 20th Century

Required: Popkin, chs. 18-19

Additional: Avner Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France
Ruth Harris, Lourdes. Body and Spirit in the Secular Age
Maurice Agulhon, Marianne au pouvoir: l'imagerie et la symbolique républicaines
Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim. His Life and Work
Debora L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-De-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style
Judith Stone, The Search for Social Peace: Reform Legislation in France, 1890-1814
Christophe Charle, Les Elites de la République

Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat. On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery
William H. Schneider, An Empire for the Masses. The French Popular Image of Africa
Karen M. Offen, “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Siècle France,”
American Historical Review (June 1984)

Week II. (Jan. 24) The Dreyfus Affair
Required: Burns, The Dreyfus Affair. A Documentary History
Popkin, chs. 20-21
**Herrick Chapman and Laura L. Frader, “Race in France,” in Race in France:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference, pp. 1-19

Additional: Steven Wilson, Ideology and Experience. Antisemitism in France at the Time of
the Dreyfus Affair
Edward Berenson, The Trial of Madame Caillaux
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair. The Case of Alfred Dreyfus
Vincent Duclert, L’affaire Dreyfus
Venita Datta, Birth of a National Icon. The Literary Avant-Garde and the Origins of the
Intellectual in France
Christopher E. Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood
Dominique Kalifa, L’encre et le sang. Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Epoque
Christophe Prochasson, Les Années électrique, 1880-1910.
Prochasson, Paris 1900
Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities. Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siecle Paris
Gerd Krumeich, Jeanne d’Arc à travers l’histoire

Week III. (Jan. 31) The First World War

Readings: Smith, France and the Great War
Popkin, 22-23
**Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914, ch. 1

Additional: Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People.
Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, Men at War, 1914-1918: National Sentiment and Trench
Journalism in France during the First World War.
Annette Becker, Oubliés de la Grande guerre: humanitaire et culture de guerre, 1914-1918
Annie Kriegel, Aux origines du communisme français, 1914-1920
Robert Wohl, French Communism in the Making
Krumeich, Gerd, Armaments and Politics in France on the Eve of the First World War: the
introduction of three-year conscription 1913-1914
Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World
War, 1914-1925
John F. V., Keiger, France and the Origins of the First World War

Week IV. (Feb. 7) Women and Men: Empire and the Legacy of War

Required: Roberts. Civilization without Sexes
Popkin, ch. 24
**Owen White, “Miscegenation and the Popular Imagination,” in Tony Chafer and Amanda
Sackur, Promoting the Colonial Idea. Propaganda and Visions of Empire in France
**Alice L. Conklin, ‘Redefining “Frenchness:’ France and West Africa, ” in Julia Clancy-
Smith and Frances Gouda, Domesticating the Empire. Race, Gender, and Family Life in
French and Dutch Colonialism

Additional: Antoine Prost, In the Wake of War: “Les Anciens Combattants” and French
Society, 1914-1939.
Karen Offen, “Body Politics: Women, Work and the Politics of Motherhood in France, 1920-
1950,” in Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare States,
1880s-1950s, ed. Gisela Bock and Pat Thane.
Essays by Michelle Perrot and Steven C. Hause in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two
World Wars, ed. Margaret Randolph Higonnet et al.
Marie-Monique Huss, “Pronatalism in the Inter-War Period in France,” Journal of
Contemporary History 25 (1990).
Françoise Thébaud, La Femme au temps de la guerre de 14.
Susan Pedersen, Family Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State in Britain and
France, 1914-1945.
Daniel J. Sherman, The Construction of Memory in Interwar France.

Week V (Feb. 14) The Apogee of Colonial France?

Required: Morton, Hybrid Modernities
Popkin, ch. 25
**Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West
Africa. 1895-1930, ch. 1

Additional: Edward Berenson, “Making a Colonial Culture? Empire and the French Public,
1880-1940,” French Politics, Culture, and Society, summer 2004
Berenson, “L’histoire culturelle du colonialisme français vue d’Amérique, « in Laurent Martin
and Sylvain Venayre, eds., L’histoire culturelle du contemporain
Emmanuelle Saada, “The Empire of Law: Dignity, Prestige, and Domination in the Colonial
Situation, ” French Politics, Culture, and Society, summer 2002
Daniel Rivet, “ Le Fait colonial et nous. Histoire d’un éloignement, ” Vingtième Siècle,
janvier-mars 2002
Owen White, Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French
West Africa, 1895-1960
Georges Balandier, “ La situation coloniale. Approche théorique, ” Cahiers internationaux de
sociologie, XI, 1951, p. 45-79

Balandier, “ La situation coloniale : ancien concept, nouvelle réalité, ” French Politics,
Culture, and Society, summer 2002.
Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, Tensions of Empire. Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois
World
Ann Laura Stoler, Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power. Race and the
Intimate in Colonial Rule
Jacques Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalisme français
Patricia M.E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Race in Colonial
Algeria,
David Prochaska, Making Algeria French. Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920
Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism
Thomas August, The Selling of Empire. British and French Imperialist Propaganda. 1890-
1940
Daniel Rivet, Le Maroc de Lyautey à Mohammed V: le double visage du Protectorat

Week VI (Feb. 21) France in the 1930s: The Politics of Extremes

Required: Jenkins, France in the Era of Fascism
* René Rémond, The Right Wing in France from 1815 to de Gaulle, pp. 273-99

Additional: Michel Winock, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism, and Fascism in France
Pierre Milza, Le fascisme francais. Passé et present
William D. Irvine, “Fascism in France and the Strange Case of the Croix de Feu,” Journal of
Modern History, 1991
Robert O. Paxton, French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgères’s Greenshirts and the Crises of
French Agriculture, 1929-1939.
Philippe Burrin, La Dérive fasciste: Doriot, Déat, Bergery, 1933-1945.
Ralph Schor, L’Opinion française et les étrangers, 1919-1939.
Kevin Passmore, From Liberalism to Fascism: The Right in a French Province, 1928-1939.
Robert Wohl, “French Fascism, Both Right and Left: Reflections on the Sternhell
Controversy,” Journal of Modern History 63, 1 (March 1991).

Week VII (Feb. 28) The Popular Front

Required: Jackson, The Popular Front
Popkin, ch. 26

Additional: Dudley Andrew and Steven Ungar, The Popular Front and the Poetics of Culture
Herrick Chapman, State Capitalism and Working-Class Radicalism in the French Aircraft
Industry
Mary Dewhurst Lewis, “The Strangeness of Foreigners: Policing Migration and Nation in
Interwar Marseille,” in Race in France
Siân Reynolds, France Between the Wars: Gender and Politics.
Jean Lacouture, Léon Blum.

Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth
Century.
Eugen Weber, The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s.
Ingo Kolbloom, La Revanche des patrons: Le Patronat français face au front populaire
Georges Lefranc, Le front populaire
Léon Blum, Un an de Front populaire
Joel Colton, Leon Blum

Week VIII (March 7) Vichy and the German Occupation of France

Required: Burrin, France Under the Germans
Popkin, ch. 27

Additional: Pierre Laborie, L’opinion française sous Vichy
Eric Jennings, Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe,
and Indochina, 1940-1944
Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France During the German
Occupation
Jean-Pierre Azema, Jean Moulin
Azéma and François Bédarida, eds., Vichy et les français
Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order
Paxton and Michael R. Marrus, Vichy France and the Jews
Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-44.
Miranda Pollard, Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France.
Marc Olivier Baruch, Servir l’Etat français: L’Administration en France de 1940 à 1944.
Susan Zuccotti, The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews.
Alan S. Milward, The New Order and the French Economy.
Francine Muel-Dreyfus, Vichy et l’éternel féminin.
John F. Sweets, Choices in Vichy France: The French Under Nazi Occupation.
H. R. Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France: A Study of Ideas and Motivation in the Southern
Zone 1940-1945.
Peter Novick, The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France
Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
Marcel Ophuls, “The Sorrow and the Pity.”

Week IX (March 21) The Liberation: Beauvoir, Sartre and their Milieu

Required: Beauvoir, The Mandarins
Popkin, ch. 28-29

Additional: Herrick Chapman, “The Liberation as a Moment in State-Making,” in Crisis and
Renewal in France, 1918-1962, eds. Kenneth Mouré and Martin S. Alexander
Priscilla E. Prestwich, “Modernizing Politics in the Fourth Republic: Women in the
Mouvement républicain populaire, 1944-1958,” in Crisis and Renewal in France
Fabrice Virgili, La France ‘virile’: Des femmes tondues à la liberation.

K. H. Adler, Jews and Gender in Liberation France.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Albert Camus, The Rebel
Camus, Camus at "Combat:” Writing 1944-1947
Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays
Ronald Aronson, Camus and Sartre: The Story of a Friendship and the Quarrel that Ended It
Jean-Paul Sartre, Sartre and Camus: A Historic Confrontation
Deirdre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography
Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance. Autobiography of Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956.
Philippe Roger, The American Enemy. The History of French Anti-Americanism

Week X (March 28) The Algerian War

Required: Ageron, Modern Algeria
Feraoun, Journal, 1955-62
Popkin, ch. 30

Additional: Raphaëlle Branche, La torture et l’armée pendant la Guerre d’Algérie
Branche, La Guerre d’Algérie: une histoire apaisée?
Sylvie Thénault, Histoire de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne
Frantz Fanon, “Unveiling Algeria,” in A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1965)
and
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
Michel Winock, “De Gaulle and the Algerian Crisis, 1958-1962,” in De Gaulle and Twentieth-
Century France, ed. Hugh Gough and John Horne
Antoine Prost, “The Algerian War in French Collective Memory,” in War and Remembrance in
the Twentieth Century, ed. Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan
John Talbott, The War Without a Name: France in Algeria, 1954-1962.
William B. Cohen, “The Algerian War and French Memory,” Contemporary European History
(November 2000).
Benjamin Stora, Histoire de l’Algérie coloniale (1830-1954).
Benjamin Stora, La Gangrène et l’oubli, la mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie.
Martin Evans, The Memory of Resistance: French Opposition to the Algerian War, 1954-1962
Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962.
Joshua Cole, “Remembering the Battle of Paris: 17 October 1961 in French and Algerian
Memory,” French Politics, Culture & Society 21, 3 (Fall 2003).
James D. Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics during the Decolonization
of Algeria.
Martin S. Alexander, Martin Evans, and J.F.V. Keiger, eds. The Algerian War and the French
Army, 1954-1962: Experiences, Images, Testimonies
Jim House and Neil MacMaster, “Une journée portée disparue. The Paris Massacre of 1961 and
Memory,” in Crisis and Renewal in France

Week XI (April 4) The Algerian War in International Context

Required: Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution

Additional: Irwin M. Wall, France, the United States, and the Algerian War.
Miles Kahler, Decolonization in Britain and France: The Domestic Consequences of
International Relations.
Tony Smith, “A Comparative Study of French and British Decolonization,” Comparative
Studies of Society and History 20 (January 1978)
Jane Kramer, “Les pieds noirs,” in Unsettling Europe (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), pp.
169-217.

Week XII (April 11) De Gaulle and the Fifth Republic

Required: Jackson, Charles de Gaulle
Feenberg, When Poetry Ruled the Streets
Popkin, chs. 31-32

Additional: David Goldey, “A Precarious Regime: The Events of May 1968,” in Philip M.
Williams, French Politicians and Elections, 1951-1969
Alain Schnapp and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, The French Student Uprising, November 1967 – June
1968: An Analytical Record
Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World
War II.
Philip G. Cerny, The Politics of Grandeur: Ideological Aspects of de Gaulle’s Foreign Policy.
Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, Génération, 2 volumes.
Raymond Aron, The Elusive Revolution.
Alain Touraine, The May Movement.
Khurshed Wadia, “Women and the Events of May ’68,” The May 1968 Events in France, ed.
Keith Reader.
Kristin Ross, May’68 and Its Afterlives.
Michael Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968.
Jean Lacouture, André Malraux: une vie dans le siècle
Lacouture, De Gaulle

Week XIII (April 18) Immigration and the Front National

Required: Gaspard, A Small City in France
**Jane Kramer, “The Mayor of Dreux.” in Europeans, pp. 354-400.
Popkin, ch. 33

Additional: Gerard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National
Identity
Patrick Weil, Weil, Qu'est-ce qu'un Français: histoire de la nationalité française depuis la
révolution
Weil, La république et sa diversité: Immigration, intégration,
Weil, La France et ses étrangers: l'aventure d'une politique de l'immigration de 1938 à nos
jours
Nonna Mayer et Pascal Perrineau, eds. Le Front national à découvert
Erik Bleich, “Anti-racism without Races: Politics and Policy in a ‘Color-Blind’ State,” in Race
in France
Robert Lieberman, “A Tale of Two Countries: The Politics of Color-Blindness in France and
the United States,” in Race in France
Yvan Gastaut, L’Immigration et l’opinion et France sous la Ve République.
Pierre-André Taguieff, ed., Face au racisme 2 vols.
Nonna Mayer, La Boutique contre le centre.
Peter Fysh and Jim Wolfreys, The Politics of Racism in France.
Alec G. Hargreaves, Immigration, “Race” and Ethnicity in Contemporary France.
Harvey G. Simmons, The French National Front: The Extremist Challenge to Democracy.
Mehdi Charef, Tea in the Harem.

Week XIV (April 25) Parité and the Politics of Universalism

Required: Scott, Parité!
Popkin, ch. 34

Additional: Mona Ozouf, Women’s Words: Essay on French Singularity
Françoise Gaspard, Claude Servan-Schreiber, Anne Le Gall, eds. Au pouvoir, citoyennes!:
liberté, égalité, parité
Philippe Bataille et Françoise Gaspard, Comment les femmes changent la politique : et
pourquoi les hommes résistent
Daniel Borillo and Eric Fassin       , Au delà du pacs: L'Expertise Familiale à l'épreuve de
l'homosexualité
Irène Théry, Les dilemmes de l'individualisme démocratique : Monde sexué et moi sexuel
Toril Moi, ed. French Feminist Thought: a Reader
Gisèle Halimi, Une embellie perdue
Dominique Frischer, La revanche des misogynes: où en sont les femmes après trente ans de
féminisme?
Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds. Beyond French feminisms:
debates on women, politics, and culture in France, 1981-2001