French Cultural Studies: Criticism at the Crossroads

Abstract

The first volume to assess French Cultural Studies in the United States, this multi-author collection includes contributions by some of the major scholarly figures in French and Francophone Studies, including Réda Bensmaïa, Ross Chambers, Lawrence Kritzman, Françoise Lionnet, and Mireille Rosello. It also features exciting work by emerging scholars. A few previously published articles that were central in conceptualizing crucial questions in French and Francophone Studies are reprinted in this collection (Kritzman, Lionnet). The volume as a whole is of the highest quality. The book successfully engages some of the major current issues and points of contention in the field, namely the place of literature vs. Cultural Studies and theory in French Studies curricula in the U.S., the passage from elite studies to an inclusion of marginalized voices, and broader issues concerning the ethical representation of "others." French Cultural Studies highlights the renewal that Cultural Studies has brought to French Studies, as well as the "contributions French theory can make to Cultural Studies" (6).