Our site is still under construction, but see below for a sneak preview of the program! Full conference brochure coming soon.

Keynote Speakers/Intervenants principaux

Michelle Bubenicek

Directrice, l’École nationale des chartes/ Director of the École Nationale des Chartes | Professeur des universités/ Professor | Auteur/ Author, Entre rébellion et obéissance (Genève, Droz), Meurtre au donjon (Paris, PUF) | Éditor, Doléances. La plainte politique, voie de régulation des rapports gouvernants-gouvernés : xiiie-xviiie s. (Paris, l’École nationale des chartes) | Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur et officier de l’Ordre national du Mérite.

Stéphane Gerson

Professeur/ Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture; Professor of French Studies and History, New York University | Author, The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cornell, 2003), Nostradamus: How an Obscure Renaissance Astrologer Became the Modern Prophet of Doom (St. Martins, 2012), Disaster Falls: A Family Story (Crown, 2017; trans. Alma, 2020) | Editor, Scholars and their Kin: Historical Explorations, Literary Experiments (University of Chicago Press, 2025)

Plenary Panels/Séances plénières

The Enlightenment, Racial Slavery, and People of Color in Eighteenth-Century France: Miranda Spieler's Slaves in Paris (2025) in Light of New Scholarship

This panel seeks to provide a textured history of slaves and free people of color in eighteenth-century France while exploring French domestic society through an imperial lens. From the vantagepoint of their ongoing research projects, panelists engage with the themes of Miranda Spieler’s new book, Slaves in Paris (Harvard, 2025). While seeking to reconstruct the experiences of non-white people in France and assess the domestic impact of colonial slavery, contributors will reveal the diversity of individual experiences as glimpsed through varied archives and elaborated by distinctive methodological approaches. Themes of the four papers include policing practices, spaces and modalities of resistance, modes of unfreedom, and the prominence of slave owners in Enlightenment culture.

Discussants

Simon Macdonald, University College London (Chair) Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, University of Southern California Meredith Martin, New York University Christy Pichichero, University of Southern California Shandiva Banerjee, Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Comments: Miranda Spieler, American University of Paris

Algeria, Resistance, and Feminist Ways of Seeing

Female ways of seeing are central to stretching ideas of resistance, not only in the context of specific historical events but also in contexts which allow us to cross through time and space. In this plenary session brings two remarkable feminist films from North Africa in discussion with historians specialising in Algerian and resistance studies. In their two short films from Algeria, Sarah El-Hamed and Nadja Makhlouf explore the role of women in the Algerian War of Liberation 1954-62. They encapsulate feminist ways of seeing, asking us to reflect upon women’s resistance in the face of colonial and post-colonial oppression. Historian of modern Algeria. Martin Evans brings this into the context of Algerian female resistance, and historian Christopher Warne, who directs the Archive of Resistance Testimony at the University of Sussex, invites us to reflect on just how impactful these new female forms and voices of resistance can be.

Discussants:

Ludivine Broch, University of Westminster (chair) Sarah El-Hamed, film director Martin Evans, University of Sussex Nadja Makhlouf, film director Christopher Warne, University of Sussex

International Conference / Colloque international

RESISTANCE / RÉSISTER

(Paris, 15-19 July 2025)


The Global Consortium for French Historical Studies 

Society for French Historical Studies

70th Annual Conference/ 70ème Conférence annuelle


Society for the Study of French History

38th Annual Conference/ 38ème Conférence annuelle


Western Society for French History

51st Annual Conference/ 51ème Conférence annuelle


with the participation of:

Association for the Study of Modern & Contemporary France

George Rudé Society

H-France

Conference description: The Global Consortium for French Historical Studies proposes the theme “Resistance,” as a singular prism for historical understanding. By bringing into conversation the written, visual, and performed historiographical practices of cultural, social, and political history relative to the ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary worlds, this international conference proposes a timely renewal of this important object of inquiry:  in different times, places, and cultures within and beyond the francophone world, what did it mean to resist?

Description du colloque: Global Consortium for French Historical Studies (Consortium mondial d'études historiques françaises) se propose d’appréhender l’histoire en mobilisant un prisme décisif : « Résister ». En faisant dialoguer des pratiques historiographiques relevant de l’histoire culturelle, sociale, politique, des mondes anciens, médiévaux, modernes et contemporains, ce colloque international entend façonner un nouvel objet d’histoire et questionner en chaque époque, chaque lieu, chaque culture, ce que résister veut dire.

Quick Facts

The call for papers is closed.

Location:  Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers at Métro Front Populaire

Conference registration opens here in April.

  • All participants must register for the conference. Conference fee information forthcoming.

  • All participants must also be members of one of the convening learned societies* 

*full-time faculty and students enrolled in a French public institution are exempt from this requirement

*SFHS and WSFH memberships are managed jointly here through Duke University Press for this conference

*SSFH membership subscription is here  

  • Cette conférence est issue de la planification conjointe des sociétés membres du Global Consortium for French Historical Studies (Consortium mondial d'études historiques françaises). Tous les participants à la conférence qui ne sont pas affiliés à une institution publique française OU qui ne sont membres ni de la Society for the Study of French History (SSFH), ni de la Society for French Historical Studies (SFHS), doivent devenir membres de l'une de ces sociétés au moment de l’inscription à la conférence. À compter du 1er janvier 2025, l’adhésion à la SFHS s’accompagnera automatiquement d’une adhésion d’une durée d’un mandat à son co-organisateur nord-américain, la Western Society for French History (WSFH).

  • Tous les participants à la conférence devront payer les frais de conférence, qui couvrent les dépenses de la conférence. Des tarifs spéciaux seront offerts aux participants sous-employés et aux étudiants.