Digital Engagement beginning during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Society for French Historical Studies
Organized by Sally Charnow and Jeff Horn, Co-Presidents
French Presse Series
French Presse: New Books on French and Francophone History began in 2021 to build community during the pandemic and highlight new work of scholars. We created a series of seven sessions that explored the relationship between the concepts of liberty and race as well as the practices of enslavement, disenfranchisement, and commemoration. Due to the success of this series, we continued our French Presse online events, even after in-person conferences resumed.
Spring 2021: Race, Gender, Colonialism, and Occupation
January 24, 2021: Tyler Stovall, White Freedom, The Racial History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Interviewer: Alyssa Sepinwall, California State University at San Marcos.
February 28, 2021: Sarah Zimmerman, Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire (Ohio University Press, 2020) and Sarah Frank, Hostages of Empire: Colonial Prisoners of War in Vichy France (Nebraska University Press, July 2021).
Interviewer: Ruth Ginio, Bar Ilan University.
March 14, 2021: Itay Lotem, The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2021).
Interviewer: Charlotte Faucher, University of Manchester.
April 18, 2021: Nimisha Barton, Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France, 1880-1945 (Cornell University Press, 2020).
Interviewer: Emmanuelle Saada, Columbia University.
May 16, 2021: Jessica Johnson, Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
Interviewer: Lorelle Semley, College of the Holy Cross.
June 27, 2021: Laure Humbert, Reinventing French Aid. The Politics of Humanitarian Relief in French Occupied Germany, 1945-1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Interviewer: Jessica Lynne Pearson, Macalester College.
July 13, 2021: Alyssa Sepinwall, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games (University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming June 2021).
Interviewer: Christy Pichichero, George Mason University.
January 26, 2022: Rachel Anne Gillett, At Home in Our Sounds: Music, Race, and Cultural Politics in Interwar Paris (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Interviewers: Jonathyne Briggs, Indiana University Northwest and Kesewa John, University College London.
February 6, 2022: Nina Gelbart, Minerva’s French Sisters: Women of Science in Enlightenment France (Yale University Press, 2021).
Interviewer: Kathleen Wellman, Southern Methodist University.
Digital Humanities: Ways Forward, A Conference in Honor of David Kammerling Smith (March 20, 2021):
PROGRAM
Welcome (2:00-2:05 pm): Sally Charnow and Jeff Horn, SFHS Co-presidents
Opening Session (2:10-3:00 pm): Digital Humanities: A Decade of Experience
Jeffrey Ravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cindy Ermus, University of Texas at San Antonio
David Wrisley, New York University, Abu Dhabi
Moderator: Christy Pichichero, George Mason University
Breakout Session 1 (3:05-3:55 pm): Prosopography and Databases: Revolutionary Movement
"Adapting Prosopography to Interpret Eighteenth-Century Revolutionary Movements: Harmonia Universalis and Radical Translations" presented by David Armando (CNR), on behalf of Harmonia Universalis.
"Radical Translations" presented by EJ Mannucci (University of Bicocca-Milan) and Sanja Perovic (King’s College London).
This panel considers the use of prosopographical data-models to extend and refine our understanding of the nature and contexts of "revolutionary activity" in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Prosopography is understood here as the investigation of the common characteristics of a group of people whose individual biographies may be largely untraceable or only indirectly known.
Moderator: Jeff Horn, Manhattan College
Session II (3:05-3:55 pm): GIS: Slavery, Maps, and Colonies
"‘No Bloodless Data’: Rethinking DH Projects on Histories of Slavery" presented by Nathan Marvin, University of Arkansas, Little Rock.
"Cap-Français: An Atlantic Port City in (Com)motion" presented by Carrie Glenn, Niagara University and Camille Cordier, University Lyon Lumière.
"Visualizing the Data of the Eighteenth Century French Caribbean" presented by Elizabeth Heath, Baruch College-City University of New York and Julia Landweber, Montclair State University.
This session examines the benefits and limitations of quantitative and spatial/GIS methodologies through an exploration of cadastres, historical maps, census records, and other spatial and visual sources. Taken together, these papers “decolonize” archival material and provide new avenues to examine the histories of slavery including colonial urban slavery and post-slavery society, as well as property holdings of women and free people of color.
Moderator: Catherine Clark, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Session III (3:05-3:55 pm): Academic Libraries and Digital Humanities
"The WWI Diary of Albert Huet" is presented by Helen Huet.
"Visualization of French Book Covers from the Liberation Collection (1944-1946) at Cambridge University" presented by Wooseob Jeong, Emporia State University and Irene Fabry-Tehranch, Collections, Cambridge University Library.
This session explores two technologies: ImagePlot and StoryMapJS as vehicles for analyzing and presenting an array of digital material including a personal diary linked to maps of Great War battles and troop movements. The session highlights ways that academic libraries and librarians have taken a leading role in providing digital content from their collections.
Moderator: Nicole Dombrowski-Risser, Towson University
Closing Session (4:00-5:30 pm): H-France Roundtable: Where Do We Go From Here?
Moderator: Michael Wolfe, Queens College-CUNY
Panelists: Michael Breen, Reed College, David K. Smith, Eastern Illinois University, Lynne Taylor, University of Waterloo
This session will consider the emergence of H-France as a leading international online forum for Francophone studies and historical scholarship. It will bring together leading voices in these fields to discuss past achievements, present challenges, and the prospects lying ahead as H-France continues its mission to promote access and excellence. Audience participation will be most welcome.
Due to technical difficulties, Breakout Session III did not occur at that time. To make up for the loss, we organized a stand alone session at noon on May 27, 2021.
SFHS Event: Academic Libraries and Digital Humanities (Thu., 27 May at noon, Eastern time)
This event, originally scheduled as a breakout session for the Digital Humanities: Ways Forward conference in March 2021, explored two technologies: StoryMapJS and ImagePlot as vehicles for analyzing and presenting an array of digital material, including a personal diary recounting a French soldier and his experience during WWI. The session highlighted ways that academic libraries and librarians have taken a leading role in providing digital content from their collections.
The WWI Diary of Albert Huet was presented by Hélène Huet, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. See here and here for more details about the project.
Visualization of French Book Covers from the Liberation Collection (1944-1946) at Cambridge University was presented by Wooseob Jeong, Emporia State University and Irene Fabry-Tehranchi, Cambridge University Library. See here and here for more details about the project.
Sally Charnow, Hofstra University, moderated.
February 27: Aro Velmet Pasteur’s Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, its Colonies, and the World (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Interviewer: Alice Conklin, Ohio State University
March 13: Futures of French History: Lightning Presentations by Early Career Scholars, led by Lisa Leff
The featured scholars are John Dieck (University of Minnesota), “Contested Commodities: A History of Cannabis and Tobacco in Colonial Morocco”; Isabelle Headrick (University of Texas at Austin), “A Family in Iran: Networks of Love, Learning and Labor in the Alliance Israélite Universelle, 1908-1978”; Ian Merkel (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin), “Terms of Exchange: Brazilian Intellectuals and the French Social Sciences”; Cameron Zinsou (Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas)
March 30: Futures of French History: Lightning Presentations by Early Career Scholars, led by Julie Hardwick
The featured scholars are Nga Bellis-Phan (University Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas), “Movable goods as gateway to the credit market. Civil and criminal aspects of pawns in 16th-18th c. France”; Jakob Burnham (Georgetown University), “Producing Pondichéry: towards a social-urban history of 18th-c French India”; Alex Taft (University of Texas at Austin), “Their Shameful Parts: Authority, Sexuality, and Abuse in Bicêtre, 1660.”
April 24, 2022: Ian Coller, Muslims and Citizens: The French Revolution and Islam (Yale University Press, 2020).
Interviewer: Judith Surkis, Rutgers University.