Announcements
Paper Prize and Fellowship Winners Announced
The WSFH is pleased to announce the winners for its 2024 Paper Prizes.
For the Millstone Prize for best interdisciplinary paper:
Katie Jarvis (Notre Dame), “Jurisdiction over Souls: Contesting Confession in the French Revolution.”
For the Ronald S. Love Prize for the best graduate student paper on the history of France and/or its colonies and the Francophone world before 1800:
Lauren Owens (Florida State University), “The Stars, the Moon, and the Female Body: Astrological Remedies for Women’s Health and Wellness in Eighteenth-Century French Remedy Books.”
For the Edward T. Gargan Prize for the best graduate student paper on post-1800 history of France and/or its colonies and the Francophone world:
Teddy Paikin (McGill University), “The Political Economy of Nineteenth-Century French Settler Colonialism: Algeria and the United States in the Economics of Michel Chevalier”
Honorable Mention: Olivia Cocking (Emory University) “‘Je ne comprends pas pourquoi j’ai perdu tous mes droits': Migration and Welfare in France After Empire.”
We thank all of our colleagues who submitted papers this year. We had an abundance of excellent work to read, and you gave the committee much to think about and much to enjoy. Likewise, we would like to thank the members of our prize committees, who put considerable work into selecting from among the numerous excellent submissions.
WSFH 50th Anniversary Retrospective Video
To mark the 50th anniversary of the society’s founding, the WSFH produced a retrospective documentary video about its own history. Check it out here!
Journal of the Western Society for French History Volume 50: Out NOw!
Volume 50 features research articles by E. Claire Cage, Jun Huang, and Hannah Olsen, as well as a discussion on The Politics of French History in Times of Crisis, notes on sources by Rebecca Scales, Jakob Burnham, and Richard Ivan Jobs / Steven Van Wolputte, and a Special Feature we can all groove to: the JWSFH Mixtape: 50th Anniversary Edition.
Check out all of the above via our Journal page!
WSFH Releases White Paper on the Job Market in French and Francophone History
Over the past several months, Nimisha Barton, Nick Underwood, Christina Carroll, and Meredith Scott have worked under the aegis of the Bridges Project to collect data and draft a White Paper on the state of the Job Market in French and Francophone History. This report represents a foundational effort to cultivate a data-driven conversation about the field that moves those of us thinking about the fate of French and Francophone history towards a rethinking of our collective approach to doctoral education for French and Francophone historians. The report offers our field’s first-ever statistical portrait of the French and Francophone history tenure-track faculty job market and a comprehensive survey of recommended interventions and initiatives to support graduate professionals no matter what career pathway they may pursue. We highly recommend that you read the report and share it with colleagues in (and out) of the field.
An executive summary and the full report can both be found here.
Welcome, New Council Members!
2024 brings a slate of new WSFH Council Members, elected this past fall. Please give a warm welcome to Libby Murphy (Georgia College), Liz Tuttle (Michigan State), Jakob Burnham (University of North Texas), Eleanor Rivera (Murray State University), Brooke Durham (West Virginia University), Meredith Scott (US Air Force Academy), Liz Fink (Institute of French Studies, NYU), Drew Flanagan (Pitt-Bradford), and Angela Haas (Western Missouri State).
Many thanks to our outgoing Council Members for their service!
Call for Papers: Journal of the WSFH
The Journal of the Western Society for French History (JWSFH) invites submissions for its 2024 issue. JWSFH publishes single and collectively authored article-length pieces (4000-6000 words) that deal with all periods and subject areas of French and Francophone history, as well as clusters of articles that speak to a common theme.Authors interested in submitting articles longer than 6000 words should reach out to the editors in advance. We also welcome “Interventions” responding to emerging and developing events in the Francophone world (2000-2500 words); “Notes on Sources” (800-1000 words); multimedia projects; roundtables; conversations, etc. Given that WSFH will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024, we especially encourage submissions that address the society’s past, present, and/or future in a meaningful way.
The deadline for submission is March 1, 2024. View the full call for papers here, and visit the journal page for more details.
2023 Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize Winner and Finalists Announced
A crucial part of the WSFH’s mission is to help foster an educational community that is actively committed to achieving equity and inclusion in the production and transmission of knowledge about the francophone world. To that end, the Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize recognizes teachers and scholars who are doing outstanding work to combat structural inequalities in the field of French/Francophone History, in the profession, in their home institutions, and beyond. By celebrating individuals who are developing tools and practices that challenge inequity, oppression, and discrimination, not only through research but also through teaching, mentoring, and professional leadership, the Tyler Stovall WSFH Mission Prize proudly signals the Western’s belief that such work is an essential part of what it means to be an exemplary citizen, scholar, and educator.
This year’s winner is Dr. Laura Talamante, a Professor of History at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who guides students in research on issues of human rights and social justice, and whose research focuses on women, politics and culture, proto-feminism, and citizenship development in Enlightenment and revolutionary France. Dr. Talamante builds connections across a broad range of groups, involving her students, colleagues, and the wider community in scholarly discussions about historical discrimination and oppression through film festivals, student-led research and authorship, community-service learning, workshops, and more. In addition to being an accomplished researcher and author, Dr. Talamante is an engaged member of her community and a dedicated mentor of undergraduate and graduate students alike. She is also a leader on her campus and in her university system, and she is an outspoken advocate for gender equity, racial justice, and mutual cultural understanding.
The three finalists this year include Dr. Tekla Babyak, Dr. Preeti Bhutani, and Dr. Gina Ulysse. The committee was particularly impressed by Dr. Babyak's analysis of the works of composers through the lens of disability and embodiment, as well as her persuasive argument for extending the French musical canon. In terms of Dr. Bhutani's portfolio, the committee was impressed by the depth and breadth of her engagement with French language learners and teachers in India and beyond, as well as the community-building and profile-raising her organization has accomplished for French instructors in India. With respect to Dr. Ulysse, the committee was impressed by her work as an educator, an artist and a public intellectual who sees mentoring as “the long road of freedom and liberation."
Each of our finalists has made, and continues to make, invaluable contributions to French and Francophone study across the globe. Please join me in congratulating them.
Many thanks as well to the Mission Prize committee members who have done so much to evaluate such a profoundly inspiring pool of applicants.
DONATE
Please consider donating money to support the Society’s efforts to support graduate students’ scholarship, research, and conference participation.