Abstract

Scholars across disciplines on both sides of the Atlantic have recently begun to open up, as never before, the scholarly study of race and racism in France. These original essays bring together in one volume new work in history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and legal studies. Each of the eleven articles presents fresh research on the tension between a republican tradition in France that has long denied the legitimacy of acknowledging racial difference and a lived reality in which racial prejudice shaped popular views about foreigners, Jews, immigrants, and colonial people. Several authors also examine efforts to combat racism since the 1970s.

“Herrick Chapman and Laura Frader have done a wonderful job of bringing together a wide range of pathbreaking essays on the topic of race in France, giving a new perspective on what it means to be French in the modern and contemporary era.”  ·  Journal of Modern History

Herrick Chapman is Associate Professor of History and French Studies at New York University. The author and editor of several books on French and European social history, he also edits the multidisciplinary journal French Politics, Culture & Society.

Laura L. Frader specializes in French social and labor history and European women's and gender history and has written extensively on these topics. In addition to her position as Chair of the Department of History at Northeastern University, she is a Senior Associate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.