CONFERENCES
51st Annual Meeting:
The Global Consortium for French Historical Studies
Paris, France
July 15-19, 2025
C A L L F O R P A P E R S: R E S I S T A N C E
Society for French Historical Studies, Society for the Study of French History, Western Society for French History
with the participation of
Association for the Study of Modern & Contemporary France, George Rudé Society, H-France
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?
Resist ! Resist the passing of time. Resist pain, illness, and despair. Resist injustice. Resist the oppressor. Resist the norm. Resist the material, economic, political, cultural, and social constraints that circumscribe our lives. Resist domination of the powerful over the weak. Resist the law and those who manipulate it. Resist the ideologies and beliefs that control social life. Resist physical restraints. Resist moral and emotional hegemonies. Resist the enslaver, the colonizer, the conqueror. Resist any force that exploits, humiliates, or violates. Resist the imperatives of the “market,” totalizing technologies, the hellish rhythms of labor efficiency, and authoritarian regimes. Resist the apparent inevitability of poverty and climatic disaster. Resist with weapons in hand or peacefully. Resist to exist…
Resistance is the interplay between dominance and its opposition. Resistance has taken the forms of mass movement, community action, individual act, and everyday gesture of refusal. Between a dominant group and subordinated group, and within and among subordinated groups, opposition may take shape along familiar axes, such as gender, generation, class, coloniality, religious affiliation nation, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Resistance has been described variously as the fruit of human intention and as human instinct. Resistance is movement in the face of power’s obstinacy; but it is also what stands firm before forcible change. In either sense, resistance may be what propels human history, all that effects change over time.
Resistance will conjure up great names and anonymous actors, rousing events and small acts, and revolutionary movements and individual expression. Resistance has manifestly entailed degrees of risk, from risk to one person’s life to the decimation of life as entire communities, and indeed whole nations, had known it. In this sense, resistance has been the substance of grand narratives that have themselves become the object of intellectual refusal.
The humanity of resistance, and its historicity, is the global object of inquiry for this conference. Yet, we cannot maintain that resistance is the sole purview of humans. The physics and metaphysics of resistance exhibited by other living things (plants, non-human animals, micro-organisms) and physical phenomena (electricity, sound waves…) have served as model, counterpoint, and metaphor for human resistance. Though resistance in these instances is driven by internal imperatives or logics unrelated to or outside human will, we cohabitate in a shared world. Knowledge of the natural world and physical phenomena is, therefore, implicated in the decisions and commitments that affect social life.
By gathering participants from all over the world, this conference reinvigorates resistance studies at a particularly important moment, one of convergence brought about by the crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic and its wake. This “global event,” for the first time in human history, cast beings simultaneously and all over the world into comparable systems of physical, health, and emotional constraint. Through the lens of this experience, how might the history of resistance be expressed? By revisiting the lives of the brave as told in extraordinary acts? By exhuming more obscure daily practices? In framing resistance through social scientific models? Or, in drawing on the infinite richness of the historical and social conditions that shaped each case in its singularity?
Historian Marc Ferro has observed how "les sociétés apprennent à résister sans cesse à un avenir qui leur échappe, à découvrir comment les hommes savent résister” because, as he underlined, "ce sont ces formes de refus qui construisent l’histoire.” In this conference, we seek to reckon collectively with what resistance meant in different times, places, and cultures through different modes of research.
Summary
The Consortium brings together a rich array of historiographical practices, including archeological, cultural, social and political histories of the ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary worlds through a singular prism -- “resistance.” By interrogating the “fait de résistance,” this international conference seeks to formulate a newly expanded object of history to shed light on what resistance has meant in different periods, places, and cultures. Our goal for the conference is to achieve creative coherence through the broadest possible understanding of its theme.
The Program Committee (*Committee Co-Chair)
Ludivine Broche, Jakob Burnham, Michelle Bubenicek, Jennifer Heuer, Libby Murphy, *Luc Robène, Penny Roberts, Pierre Serna, *Solveig Serre, Nick Underwood.
Local Arrangements
Luc Robène, Solveig Serre.
Practical Information
This conference represents the 70th Annual Conference of the SFHS, the 51st Annual Conference for the WSFH, and the 38th Annual Conference of the SSFH!
This conference comes out of the joint planning of member societies in the Global Consortium for French Historical Studies. All conference participants who are not affiliated with a French public institution OR who are not members of either the Society for the Study of French History (SSFH) or the Society for French Historical Studies (SFHS) must become members of one of these societies by the time they register for the conference. Beginning January 1, 2025, SFHS membership will automatically come with a one-term membership to its North American co-organizer, the Western Society for French History (WSFH).
All conference participants will be required to pay the conference fee, which defrays the conference expenses. Special pricing will be available to underemployed and student participants.
Please note that only proposed works that clearly draw on the conference theme will be considered. As usual, your proposed work should be unpublished and presented for the first time at this conference.
In the spirit of the global consortium and cross-cultural exchange, we encourage the submission of single paper proposals rather than pre-formed panels, though the Program Committee will give pre-formed panels full consideration. Other formats for this conference include roundtables, posters, exhibitions, and performances.
We ask you to submit your proposals using the Proposal Submission Form, which will aid our Program Committee in organizing a stimulating event. However, if you are experiencing difficulties submitting this form or have any questions, please contact: SFHSpresidents2025@gmail.com
How to Submit
You will hear back from the scientific committee by December 15, 2024.
Future Conference Locations
2026 Memphis, TN
2028 Baltimore, MD
Choose Your Own Adventure: We are always looking for volunteers to host the conference!
Previous Conference Programs
Click on the links to find recent conference programs. Any scholars who can provide electronic copies of programs from earlier conferences should contact the WSFH secretary.
2000 Los Angeles, CA
1999 Asilomar, CA
1995 Las Vegas, NV
1991 Reno, NV
1989 New Orleans, LA
1987 Las Cruces, NM
1986 Baltimore, MD
1985 Edmonton, AB, Canada
1984 Albuquerque and Santa Fe
1982 Winnipeg, MB, Canada
1977 Las Cruces, NM