HIST 207 - France: A Contested Nation

FDR: HU
Credits: 3
Planned Offering: Winter 2015 and alternate years.

Prerequisite: Instructor consent. What does it mean to be French? What should France be? What lessons should we draw from French history? These three questions have been central to French political and cultural struggles and debates since the Revolution and remain so today. This course looks at how men and women–politicians, intellectuals, journalists, activists, ordinary citizens–have answered these questions. We study debates over citizenship in the Revolution, how individuals in the post-revolutionary era tried to make sense of their immediate past, and how the divides born of the Revolution explain the turbulent course of French politics until the mid-20th century. We also examine the battles over the memory of World War II and the Algerian War, and explore contemporary French debates over identity in an age of globalization and trans-national immigration. Horowitz.