Introduction: Working on France

Abstract

In spring 1994 the Institute of Studies at New York University held a conference to explore issues that scholars in American universities confront when they write and teach about France. We had two goals in designing the program. The first was to think about how scholarly work is embedded in a continuing history of French-American relations on several levels-political, cultural, and academic. As specialists on France, we inhabit a complicated place, shaped as it is by intellectual battles within two countries and by a remarkable history of mutual fascination and misunderstanding between peoples. We also work, consciously or otherwise, as comparativists, taking the measure of what we see in France from our own knowledge of the United States. The conference assembled historians, social scientists, and a few literary specialists to discuss the ways these cross-cultural relationships have influenced how we work on France. Our second goal was to reflect on the interdisciplinary character of our work, including some attention to the fruitful but problematic notion of civilization as an interdisciplinary field in the American university. French Civ continues to be a growing specialty within departments. Undergraduates flock to courses on society and francophone cultures outside France. Professors and graduate students venture into the new frontiers of popular culture, cultural theory, and postcolonial studies. But beneath the pragmatic surface of job openings and course enrollments lie the same conceptual issues that have vexed area studies for a long time: