In August 2022 the editorship of French Historical Studies passed from Kay Edwards and Carol Harrison (University of South Carolina) to a new team, Christine Haynes and Jennifer Ngaire Heuer. As we take the helm of this journal, which has been publishing since 1958, we are humbled by the trust placed in us by the search committee, Jeff Horn, Jean Pedersen, and Roxanne Panchasi, and the Executive Board of the Society for French Historical Studies, especially its president, Bryant (Tip) Ragan. We are deeply conscious of the responsibility we are assuming to serve our community of scholars, by continuing to publish the highest caliber of scholarly work on the history of France, defined in the broadest sense, chronologically, geographically, and thematically.In assuming the editorship of FHS, we are awed by and grateful for the example set by our predecessors, especially Kay and Carol. During their eight-year tenure they not only maintained the long tradition of publishing four stellar issues per year but also undertook a number of important initiatives, including shortening the time involved in the peer review process; making the journal more international, in its reviewers as well as its authors; and undertaking a thorough redesign of the journal, both print and electronic, including the addition of beautiful cover illustrations. We all owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude for their brilliant and enthusiastic guidance of the journal during their tenure.We are also incredibly grateful to the journal's managing editor, Laura Foxworth, who has agreed to stay on. Although many authors and reviewers may not know her role in the editorial process, it is central, and we have already benefited enormously from her smart and sound guidance. We are excited to work with her—and also the production and marketing staff at Duke University Press, still an ideal home for the journal—in the coming years.As an editorial team, we are closer in our scholarly specializations than Carol and Kay. Christine (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) is a dix-neuvièmiste who has written about a wide range of aspects of the cultural, political, economic, and military history of the long nineteenth century (1789–1914), including a book on the post-Napoleonic occupation of France. Jennifer (University of Massachusetts Amherst) also works mostly on the revolutionary era writ large, with special interests in gender, family, war, race, culture, and citizenship. However, we are both eager to get to know a wide variety of scholarship and scholars of all eras of French history. Although we teach at different institutions, we have experience collaborating and are grateful that email, Zoom, and the journal's online system, now transitioning from Editorial Manager to ScholarOne, enable us to work together so easily at a distance.Under our leadership, FHS will, above all, remain committed to publishing outstanding research, including in an annual special issue and regular forums. However, while individually authored articles based on primary research will remain the mainstay of the journal, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected such research, and will continue to do so, likely in ways that we cannot fully anticipate. At the same time, persistent discrimination and violence against people of color in the United States, in France, and elsewhere emphasize the need for our profession and its publications to work harder to include more voices, both of historians today and of historical subjects in the past. Building especially on discussion of this theme at the annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies in March 2022 in Charlotte, North Carolina, we intend to continue to make this journal more inclusive, in ways that are complementary to our sister societies, such as the Western Society for French History and the French Colonial History Society, and their publications. As we all recover from and adapt to the events of the last few years and to whatever comes next, we will be open to creative possibilities, such as new sorts of historiographical, pedagogical, collaborative, and hybrid conversations. In feeling our way forward, we will rely even more heavily than our predecessors on you, the journal's readers, authors, and reviewers. Now more than ever, this journal—and our society more generally—depends on you for its existence. Please support our scholarly community by subscribing to the journal, submitting your work, agreeing to review manuscripts, serving on the editorial board, and dropping us notes with comments and suggestions at french.historical.studies@gmail.com.
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Apr 1, 2023
Todd Martin 
Open Access