New Books in French Studies

Release Date

All Episodes

Maddalena Alvi, "The European Art Market and the First World War: Art, Capital, and the Decline of the Collecting Class, 1910–1925" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

The outbreak of the First World War shattered the established European art market. Amidst fighting, looting, confiscations, expropriation fears and political and economic upheaval, an integrated marketplace shaped by upper-class patrons broke down entirely. In its place, Maddalen ... Show more

. 1h 0min

Hannah Frydman, "Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Between the Sheets: Sexuality, Classified Advertising, and the Moral Threat to Press Freedom in France (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Hannah Frydman reveals a space, hidden in plain sight in Third Republican Paris, where deviant sexualities and lives could be experimented with and fi ... Show more

. 45min 53sec

Aubrey Gabel, "The Politics of Play: Oulipo and the Legacy of French Literary Ludics" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

Showing the political importance of play in postwar French literature In postwar France, authors approached writing ludically, placing rules and conditions on language and on the context of composition itself. They eliminated "e's" and feminized texts; they traveled according to ... Show more

. 47min 4sec

Melissa Byrnes, "Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African Migrants in the Suburbs of Paris and Lyon" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)

“A lot of things become possible when [the nation state] is not the only framework,” Melissa Byrnes reminds us in this deeply intimate local history of North African migrants in France. In this conversation about her new book, Making Space: Neighbors, Officials, and North African ... Show more

. 1h 9min

Rachel Jean-Baptiste, "Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships persisted, resulting in the births of thousands of children. These children, mostly born to African women and European men, spark ... Show more

. 56min 43sec