American French Research Articles

American Sammys and French Poilus in the Great War: Sport, Masculinities and Vulnerability

The violence and duration of fighting throughout the Great War created an intense feeling of vulnerability among the men engaged in battle, which challenged their perception of manliness. When the Americans joined the war in 1917, the balance between the two opposing armies was modified and the psychological crises of French soldiers brought to an end. The confidence shown by the American soldiers and their first successes on the battlefield changed the way the French Poilus perceived their new allies. From scepticism to admiration, Frenchmen's feelings extended beyond the fighting. Indeed, by living with American soldiers in the trenches and camps behind the front, French soldiers discovered a new culture where games and sport played a major role and contributed to building manliness. The Foyers Franco-Américains du Soldat (Franco-American hostels for soldiers) provided an ideal place for the cultural transfer of a model of masculinity from Sammys to Poilus. The foyers were managed by the American YMCA and eventually reached the number of 1,500 in France during the war. These hostels afforded soldiers numerous opportunities to develop cultural and sports practices, by bringing together Americans and Frenchmen. Mainly based on the archives of the American Expeditionary Forces, the YMCA and the French Army, the paper argues that the Foyers du Soldat brought to light a new model of masculinity based on sport, which challenged the Frenchmen's vision. It aims to show the rapid transformation of masculine identity within a context of extreme vulnerability and confirms the changes in representations of men in French society at this time.

Le Corsaire idéal: The Life of Dublin Mariner Patrick Dowlin, c. 1756–96

This article assesses the little-known or documented history of Irish bucker,2 American privateer and French naval officer Patrick Dowlin, encompassing the period of the American War of Independence. It also provides information regarding Dowlin's closest compatriots and describes several ruses used by smugglers, privateers and their armateurs at sea or ashore in achieving their goals. Some minor ship histories have been included to help explain the practices of the period while also serving to illustrate Dowlin's sea-going career. The article questions current assumptions regarding the full impact of Dowlin's role during the war. It does this by utilizing hitherto unused sources, which not only amplify his actions but those of his compatriots. It assesses the impact of their privateering efforts. It also documents nautical events that occurred during Dowlin's lifetime to illustrate his endeavours and those of his contemporaries.

The DAFT/FADA survey

Context. As a contribution to the understanding of the dark energy concept, the Dark energy American French Team (DAFT, in French FADA) has started a large project to characterize statistically high redshift galaxy clusters, infer cosmological constraints from weak lensing tomography, and understand biases relevant for constraining dark energy and cluster physics in future cluster and cosmological experiments.

Increased frequency of HLA-B7 among B27-negative seronegative spondarthritis patients from Mumbai, western India

Seronegative spondarthritis (SSA) is a group of inflammatory disorders that shares certain clinical features and has a strong association with the human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-B27 allele. Serologically, HLA-B27, HLA-B22, HLA-B7, HLA-B40 and HLA-B42 antigens belong to the HLA-B cross-reacting antigen group (CREG). In addition to B27, other B locus antigens are associated with B27-negative American black, Brazilian, French and Chinese SSA patients. Many B27-negative individuals in India have developed SSA with severe clinical and radiological findings. This stimulated the evaluation of the involvement of HLA-B7 CREG antigens among B27-negative SSA patients from western India. A total of 276 SSA patients who were B27-negative and fitted the modified New York criteria for AS and the European Spondyloarthropathy Study Group (ESSG) criteria for spondarthritis from western India were studied and compared with 637 normal, healthy individuals who were B27-negative and of the same ethnic background. A significantly increased phenotype frequency of HLA-B7 (PF=57.24% vs. 22.44%; P<0.001) and a significant decreased phenotype frequency of HLA-B40 (PF=18.11% vs. 31.86%; P<0.001) was observed when compared to the controls. These results suggest that HLA-B7 antigen may be associated with B27-negative SSA in patients from western India.

Creole Cultures of the Caribbean: Historical Archaeology in the French West Indies

Historical archaeology is a relatively recent development in the French West Indies, in contrast to the Anglophone Americas where for over 30 years, historical archaeologists have investigated the sites of plantation villages in the United States and in the Caribbean to seek insights into the ways in which enslaved Africans adapted to and survived the horrors of slavery, and created unique and vibrant Creole cultures. Although plantations have been archaeologically investigated in the former French possessions of the United States, their Caribbean counterparts, and particularly the enslaved population who labored on them, have only recently become a focus of archaeological research. Yet the historical setting and development of plantation slavery in the French colonies of the Caribbean was necessarily distinct from both the British Caribbean and from North American French colonial establishments. This paper discusses the state of historical archaeology in the French West Indies, with particular reference to plantation archaeology in Guadeloupe and Martinique. This research identifies some of the unique aspects of the economic and historical context of slavery on French Caribbean plantations.

Threads: Collecting Cloth in the North American French Colonies

Trade of European-produced cloth and clothing enabled indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants of colonial New France to rethink the “hand-woven”, impacting how self could be presented through dress. At the same time, objects were being collected in New France for cabinets of curiosities and museums. These different collections resonated in different ways through history, subsequently influencing modern understandings of colonial cloth and clothing. This paper examines colonial experiences of cloth by looking at archaeological remnants of cloth and cloth production as compared to how indigenous and non-indigenous colonial peoples were and are being represented by cloth and clothing in museum collections.

Signer sous l'Ancien Régime colonial français : polysémie d'une pratique d'écriture ordinaire

During the twenty-first century, the signature has been raised as an archetypical unit of account for the literacy of a group in a particular place, at a particular time. It also has been used as an index of the impact of the school network on the transmission of basic literacy skills. Nevertheless, a signature is everything but an historical invariant. To sign is a polysemical act with a history. It is a common practice that is tied to the juridical discourse and is socially connoted. This article intends to present some thoughts, from the New France history, upon contexts that can add value to the signature and have contributed to the infiltration of the written culture into the North American French colonial society before 1760.

America's Global Role after Bush

The next American president's foreign policy will be conducted in the face of two main challenges. One is the legacy of George W. Bush: Iraq in particular, and a substantially weakened US strategic...

"Excellence in Execution" and "Fitness for Teaching": Assessments of Women at the Conservatoire Américain

IN 1921 GERMAN-BORN AMERICAN CONDUCtor Walter Damrosch and French conductor and composer Francis Casadesus opened a new school for American musicians in the Palais de Fontainebleau, just outside of Paris. This school, which became known as the Conservatoire Americain, was created to offer American musicians advanced training in performance, composition, and teaching. Over time, the Conservatoire produced numbers of successful composers, performers, scholars, and instructors such as Bathia Churgin, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Dorothy de Val, Herbert Elwell, Pamela Frank, Helen Hosmer, Charles Rosen, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Andre-Michel Schub, Louise Talma, Augusta Read Thomas, and Charles Wuorinen. Prior to the First World War American musicians frequently traveled to Germany and Austria for such education, which was not readily available in the United States' fledgling conservatories and schools of music. Female instrumentalists were especially drawn to study in Germany and Austria, where, following the model of Clara Schumann and other professional women, female concert artists were both comfortably situated as normal members of society and positively received in the concert hall as serious artists. The students who made this trek and enrolled in the Hochschule in those countries were serious practitioners, having exhausted their domestic resources for coaching and pedagogy, and they were, without exception, less interested in pursuing the more traditional path of becoming educators than in attaining careers as soloists. Pianist Julie Rive-King, violinists Camille Urso and Maud Powell, and cellist Elsa Reugger all left the United States to pursue further training in Germany and Austria, having found that the societal limitations placed on women in the United States hampered their abilities to reach their full potential. With the advent of the war, however, travel to Germany was neither practical nor politically advisable. Seeing this as an opportunity to both help repay the assistance of their allies in the war and promote French culture above German culture in America, the French government assisted Casadesus and Damrosch in their venture. Because the Paris Conservatoire placed strict restrictions on its applicants in terms of age and nationality, Casadesus and Damrosch decided to hire members of its faculty during the summer to staff a summertime conservatory. Thus, the Conservatoire Americain opened its doors to some ninety American music students in June 1921, offering them three months of rigorous study. In establishing the Conservatoire, Casadesus and Damrosch had three primary goals: that students of the highest level would be trained at the school by the best French musicians; that Franco-American exchange and goodwill would be cultivated on an advanced cultural and artistic level; and, most remarkably for its time, that men and women would be trained for professional careers on an equal basis. (1) In this article I examine this last tenet of the founders through the lens of the assessment of female students at the Conservatoire Americain. Admissions assessments, internal examinations, and the granting of diplomas were three ways in which women were evaluated and taught at the Conservatoire. Drawing on the school's archival documents and the testimony of students, I show that despite both deliberate and unintended stereotyping and discrimination among some school policies and instructors, women at the Conservatoire did in fact receive educations equal to their male counterparts, in some cases surpassing them in overall achievement. The evidence presented here also establishes that the exit assessments--diplomas and prizes--made by the Conservatoire had an impact on the acceptance of its alumnae as professionally qualified musicians. Although a full examination of their posttraining careers is outside the scope of this article, it is important to note that many women who graduated from the Conservatoire Americain went on to hold positions in American musical life as soloists, orchestra concertmasters and principals, chamber musicians, conductors, composers, instructors, and music school deans and heads. …

Pehr Kalm: A Swedish Naturalist's Geological Observations in North America, 1748-1751

Pehr Kalm served as Carolus Linnaeus' eyes and ears in the New World (the American Colonies and French Canada) for three years in the mid 18th Century. Kalm was one of the first of many disciples to serve his mentor in his quest to classify everything animal, vegetable, and mineral for his all-encompassing inventory catalog, Systema Naturae. Kalm reported everything he encountered on his journey (resa) to North America in diary form similar to Linnaeus' accounting for his journeys, and he was every bit as keen an observer. His understanding of natural science (i.e. geology) was limited, but his observations on the subject, among the first in North America, were interesting, concise, and relatively detailed for the time.

The Niagara Peninsula viticultural area: A climatic analysis of Canada's largest wine region

A semi-continental climate moderated by two of the Great Lakes coupled with a wide range of mesoclimates, topographies and soils are some of the distinguishing characteristics of the Niagara Peninsula viticultural area. The history of grape cultivation spans over 150 years, while that of wine production using European grape varieties dates back about 30 years. Although Vitis labrusca is still grown commercially, French–American hybrids and French European varieties are used exclusively for table wines. This study examines the topographic and climatic attributes of this cool climate wine region and provides a general comparison of growing season conditions with those of other established wine regions in Europe and North America. Generally, such factors as the growing degree days, monthly mean temperatures, precipitation and sunshine hours compare favourably with France's Bordeaux and Burgundy regions. Nonetheless, as is typical of cooler mid-latitude continental climates, the Niagara Peninsula experiences frequent damaging temperatures in the winter, late spring and early autumn as well as year-to-year variability in growing season conditions. These characteristics together with heavy and poorly drained clay soils constitute the main limitations to viticulture.

Emerging from Determinism

Keywords Freud, positivism, Lacan, intention Lacan has been ignored by philosophers (in the Anglo-American tradition) partly because he was always antipathetic to positivism and pragmatism, and drew on continental phenomenology instead. Psychoanalysis was forged in the Vienna where logical positivism also had its roots in the early twentieth century. After the diaspora in the late 1930s, due to the Nazi annexation of Austria, psychoanalysis then coalesced with American pragmatism to produce a psychoanalytic trend that became extremely mechanistic. The positivist view of reality led to the mechanisms of the ego being thought of as entities you could bark your shins on. American psychoanalysis derived from, and elaborated, Viennese "ego-psychology," regarding the unconscious as determined biologically, a set of drives and brain functions. It makes psychoanalysis in effect a biology. As a result, the conscious mind was a "determined" epiphenomenon through which the determining unconscious could influence psychology. This is a crass, mechanistic view that distorted the development of psychoanalysis in America—although recently that naivety has deservedly succumbed. The aberration has been breaking down since the 1970s (see Fromm 1971), although it is now desperately trying to survive through mating with the new neuroscience promoted in the American "decade of the brain" (the 1990s). Freud was himself nonphilosophical. Indeed, he might almost have been said to be antiphilosophical. He doubted . . . as to which of the countless philosophical systems, should be accepted [by the psychoanalyst], since they all seem to rest on an equally insecure basis. It seemed more prudent to wait, and to discover whether a particular attitude towards life might be forced upon us with all the weight of necessity by analytical investigation itself. (Freud 1921/1955, 270) Freud is claiming that philosophy should grow from psychoanalysis. As a result, psychoanalysts have mostly neglected philosophy. A further result of this lack of philosophical inquiry is that philosophers have felt justified in neglecting psychoanalysis, including its great achievement—namely, the discovery of the unconscious mind with its nonrational rules of operation that spawn irrationality, self-deception, and akrasia, and its profound implications for a very different view of reality. The unconscious is very difficult for a philosophy predicated on the enlightenment view of man as consciously rational.1 Unless such philosophies open up to a view of irrationality as the essence of humanity, they remain impervious to psychoanalysis, and indeed impervious to a comprehensive view of the human mind. Because of the antiphilosophical bias of analysts, nobody seemed to notice that psychoanalysis in fact does rest on strong implicit philosophical [End Page 79] assumptions about reality. Freud himself was formed as a nineteenth-century scientist basing his worldview on materialist conceptions of the laws of nature. However, Freud's raw material for his research (the human mind, its experience, its pleasures, and its pains) drove him, kicking and screaming in the opposite direction toward a romantic perception. As a matter of fact, despite the scientism in his work, Freud did adore German romantic literature, from Goethe onward. Because of the implicit philosophical assumptions of a positivist kind, one problem that Freud ducked was this: How does an intentional person emerge from biologically determined brain functioning? Lacan and Freud's Romanticism For most psychoanalysts—American, British, or Continental—the ambiguity in Freud is not addressed.2 It is to Lacan's credit that he exposed the philosophical divide most explicitly, between positivism and romanticism. He took possession of the reluctant Freud for the nonpositivist mode. Lacan confronted and castigated American psychoanalysis because it married into the family of American rationalism; it became committed to pragmatism, positivism, and adaptationism, and thereby accentuated psychic determinism. American positivism was a bête noir for Lacan, who confronted that ambiguity in terms that virtually construct it as an American–French conflict. Lacan's Freud is a purloined one, claiming him for French philosophy. This has made him difficult for both Anglo-American philosophers and Anglo-American psychoanalysts. In fact, Freud's "romanticism" was not invisible—even to Freud. It was literally...

Dictionary of Latin American Racial and Ethnic Terminology

This dictionary of Latin American racial and ethnic terminology now features terms of the French American and American French Creole Caribbean. It also introduces new symbols and abbreviations, and cross references more terms between and among Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Theory and the &amp;quot;Chunnel&amp;quot;: Cultural Studies and the Retreat of Ideology

In the fall of 1992, a group of French students disguised as a film crew snuck into that virtually complete and much touted link between France and Great Britain, the tunnel under the English Channel, popularly known as the Chunnel. While an obvious proficiency in the Gallic systeme D allowed the students to talk their way past the presumably lax French authorities, their more disciplined British counterparts intercepted and detained the mock filmmakers, as the inimitable language of the Associated Press specifies, before they reached the English side (Sacramento Bee). Above and beyond whatever implications the completed Chunnel may have on relations between continent and island, Fifth Republic and United Kingdom, and between so-called continental and analytic schools of philosophy, the silly incident recounted above stands as a possible caricature of the relation between (French) theory and (Anglo-American) cultural studies.1 For at least the last four decades, American French departments have had the prestige and luxury of being at the forefront (or at least of being perceived as being at the forefront) of the most innovative intellectual developments in the humanities, from existentialism through the various structuralisms and their successors. In more recent years, students of (French) theory have been obliged to defend it against the American Marxist questioning of its political relevance or irrelevance, on the one hand, and the accusation of

A cross-language study of vowel sounds produced with and without emphasis: Testing the theory of adaptive dispersion

According to Lindbloms Theory of Adaptive Dispersion (TAD), the aim of talkers is to make phonological contrasts sufficiently distinctive to promote linguistic comprehension by the listener while minimizing the articulatory effort needed to achieve this degree of distinctiveness. When part of an utterance carries new—rather than given—information, it tends to be spoken with greater emphasis and clarity. In this study, several possible acoustic correlates of vowels in emphasized words were examined in American English, French, and Japanese in comparable phonetic and sentence contexts. These possible correlates include an expanded vowel space, greater vowel inherent spectral change, and a greater systematic variation in vowel length. Preliminary analyses suggest that the contrast-enhancing properties of emphasized vowels vary considerably across languages. [Work supported by NIDCD.]

French Fascism: An American Obsession?

If it is true, as Susan Sontag said, that is fascinating,' and if that applies to French as well, why is it that only Americans-so it seems-find it fascinating? do French critics and historians resist its fascination? While there has been a plethora of articles, books and theses written about it in United States in last ten years,2 in France there have been only a few sporadic texts.3 Why this transatlantic gap between American obsession with French and complete lack of interest in it in France? This is what I would like to investigate. Since this question is wide-ranging, I can only sketch out major influences in two countries' very different approaches to French Fascism. I will first look into history of American French fascistology-a word coined by Stanley G. Paynein order to point out which work, theory, group or event brought about recent obsession. This history unfolds like a play in four acts, with a growing number of characters. If stage at first had an avant-garde appearancealmost deserted and preoccupied with a gloomy idea-nowadays it is as crowded and verbose as a musical comedy. I will try to explain why there is so little interest in fascist studies in France, examining what were and are major obstacles preventing its expansion, and which school of thought dominated and restricted it. Far from being as rich in new developments as its American counterpart, it has taken on role of a ressassement 6ternel. The first act of my play, How America Became Obsessed with French Fascism, could be called Fascism gets a Culture, and is divided into three scenes. Act I, scene 1 begins in late 1960s with crisis of avantgarde. It is then, as Andrew Hewitt has shown, that the possibility of at least thinking a fascist Modernism was opened up (38). The calling into question of relation between aesthetics and politics, or more exactly, loss of supposedly natural conflation of progressive aesthetics and progressive politics, paved way for re-evaluation of Fascism's mingling of artistic and political. Even if art historians and theoreticians like Poggioli refused to fully acknowledge legacy of Italian

Dictionary of Latin American racial and ethnic terminology: pt.1: Spanish American terms; pt.2: Brazilian Portuguese terms; pt. 3: French American and American French Creole terms

Dictionary of Latin American racial and ethnic terminology: pt.1: Spanish American terms; pt.2: Brazilian Portuguese terms; pt. 3: French American and American French Creole terms

Association between Cigarette and Alcohol Consumption and Raynaud’s Phenomenon

The association between alcohol and cigarette consumption and Raynaud’s Phenomenon (RP) was examined by using data from an American–French collaborative, cross-sectional, epidemiological study in five geographically varied regions (Charleston, South Carolina, USA; and Grenoble, Tarentaise, Nyons, and Toulon, France). Using logistic regression models that take into account the sampling weights, the association was examined stratified by gender and adjusted for age, body mass index, self-perceived health, and education. Overall, neither cigarette nor alcohol consumption showed a significant association with RP. In men, however, a V-shaped relationship between drinking and RP was observed, with mild consumption (1 to 7 drinks per week) exhibiting a protective effect over abstinence, whereas occasional (less than 1 drink per week), moderate (8 to 18 drinks per week) and heavy consumption (more than 18 drinks per week) did not. Among the participants with RP, no significant association was observed between RP attack frequencies and the amount of either alcohol or cigarette consumption. These negative findings suggest that having RP is not strongly affected by alcohol or cigarette consumption.

Exploration Applications of RADARSAT Imagery In Western Canada And Tropical Regions

For the past two decades or so, remote sensing satellite technology has been widely used by the petroleum industry to support exploration in both frontier and mature areas. The application of this technology covers a wide range of geological and logistical aspects of the petroleum sector including:reconnaissance geological mapping of large areas,detailed mapping of prospective structures,delineation of fractured related reservoir trends,direct detection of surface alterations and vegetation changes related to oil seeps,logistical application associated with the collection and planning of seismic data, andenvironmental monitoring of petroleum related activities.To date, most remote sensing studies have been conducted with images that are obtained from passive, optical satellite imaging systems, such as the American LANDSAT and French SPOT satellites. However, these systems rely on short wavelength energyemitted from the sun, limiting their imaging capabilities. Radar imaging systems have proven to be excellent surface mapping tools in temperate and tropical areas because they are sensitive to variations in topography and surface roughness, and thus are capable of imaging the topographic expression of structures which are completely obscured by vegetation and other surficial material. Moreover, images can be obtained through heavy cloud cover due to radar's longer wavelength. The shadow effect which results from radar's active nature greatly enhances the surface expression of structures on the image. This effect can be maximized by carefully selecting the beam alignment to coincide with preferred structural orientations. In addition, images over the same area with different incidence angles and same or opposite look directions can be used to obtain stereo images which improve the structural mapping capabilities of radar. The advantages of radar imaging systems as compared to passive imaging technology (such as the sensors on the LANDSAT and SPOT satellites) can be seen in Chevron's exploration attempts in the Sumapaz Area of the Magdalena Basin in Colombia (Figures 1a and 1b). LANDSAT images of the area without significant cloud cover were difficult to find. The best of these images is shown in Figure 1a and the corresponding RADARS AT image is shown in Figure 1b. Not only does radar defeat the cloud cover problem, it captures, in much greater detail, the topographic expression of the structures. Figures 1c and 1d illustrate the benefit of using radar systems in areas with more subtle structures, showing a comparison between imaging technology and radar images over the mildly deformed region of the Canadian fore-foothills. Note that the imaging technology used in this area is very flat, showing no topographic relief, whereas the shadowing effect of radar enhances the topographic expression of subtle elongated anticlines which form significant hydrocarbon traps in the area. Successful application of radar imaging systems for geological exploration has been achieved with airborne synthetic apeture radar (SAR) surveys. However, airborne surveys suffer from two main shortfalls. First, the surveys can become prohibitively expensive when used as regional reconnaissance tools. Second, airplane access to remote or politically unstable areas is problematic.

Cultural Development: State of the Question and Prospects for Québec

Within Canada, there exist two industrial cultural markets whose interpenetrations are few but which are massively penetrated by their common neighbour, the United States. In this study we examine the North American French- language market whose production, diffusion, capitalization, and promotion centre is in Montreal, and whose effective radius includes Québec and its immediate eastern and western borders. This centre has established links outside Canada in the international Francophone market and, after numerous attempts, the American market—the most recent, and perhaps the most promising, being the popular singer Céline Dion, coming on the heels of success by film director Denys Arcand and impressionist André-Philippe Gagnon.