French history 
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/18/2021
Heating Up Culture Wars, France to Scour Universities for Ideas That ‘Corrupt Society’
France's minister of higher education has pledged to investigate "Islamo-leftism" as a corrupting influence on society allegedly promoted by French university scholars.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/22/2021
Lucky Luke, the Comic Book Cowboy, Discovers Race, Belatedly
While Emmanuel Macron decries American obsessions with race and prejudice, right-wing French comics readers have reacted with anger to an effort to update the longstanding cowboy-themed comic franchise with heroic Black characters.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
2/21/2021
Emmanuel Macron’s Socially Constructed Bogeymen
by Daniel W. Drezner
What, exactly, "Islamo-leftism" is, and what relationship it could possibly have to American academic theories, are two big questions left unanswered by the French President's attacks on academic ideas.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/9/2021
France’s New Public Enemy: America’s Woke Left
A body of American critical theory about the nexus of difference and power has proved threatening to a French intellectual elite that is historically invested in the nation's formally color-blind republican traditions even as ethnic and religious diversity exposes the gaps in those traditions.
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2/7/2021
Notre Dame: The Soul of France (Review)
by Jeff Roquen
Agnès Poirier's book describes the central place of the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in the city and in French history both religious and secular, and the angst provoked by its threatened destruction by fire in 2019.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
1/19/2021
France Knows How This Ends
by James McAuley
"What is especially useful to remember about the Dreyfus affair now is the point of no return it represented, the repugnant embrace of lies by one half of society, educated people who were not ignorant but who had simply ceased to care."
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SOURCE: The Art Newspaper
12/17/2020
French Senate Blocks Restitution of 27 Artifacts to Benin and Senegal in Dispute with National Assembly
The bill under consideration would compel France to return artifacts plundered from Benin and Senegal in the 1890s.
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10/11/2020
Paris, City of Dreams: Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann and the Creation of Paris
by Jeff Roquen
Nothing can compare to a visit to Paris, but until international travel resumes, readers can learn how the modern city was built through Mary McAulliffe's book.
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SOURCE: BBC
9/25/2020
Rimbaud and Verlaine: France Agonises over Digging up Gay Poets
While advocates see reinterrment at the National Mausoleum as a recognition of gay contributors to French literary history, some opponents suggest the iconoclastic poets would have rejected any such honor.
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SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
8/27/2020
Nepotism Is Bad For Government. Trump’s Convention Reminds Us Why
by Christine Adams
The pervasive influence of Trump's family members on government compares to the courts of the Bourbon kings of France. Republicans might consider how that worked out.
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SOURCE: Baltimore Sun
6/11/2020
Robert Forster, a Social Historian of France, Who Taught at Johns Hopkins for 31 Years
Robert Forster, who passed away May 13, is remembered as a rigorous scholar and an organized, supportive teacher.
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SOURCE: History.com
5/18/2020
When Did People Start Eating in Restaurants?
Historian Rebecca Spang's book "The Invention of the Restaurant" examines the French roots of dining out.
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SOURCE: Johns Hopkins HUB
5/15/2020
History Professor Robert Forster dies at 93
Forster, who taught at Hopkins from 1966 to 1996, was renowned for his work on the history of early modern France and is remembered as a generous, supportive mentor.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/16/20
The battle for Notre Dame
by Philip Kennicott and Aaron Steckelberg
As the cathedral rises from the ashes, a tug of war over its transformation and history.
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SOURCE: The Conversation
1/10/20
We’re living in the bizarre world that Flaubert envisioned
by Susanna Lee
Many might feel bewildered and demoralized. But fans of the 19th-century French novel have seen this before.
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SOURCE: NY Times
10/22/19
Georgette Elgey, 90, Dies; Wrote Epic History of Postwar France
A former journalist, she spent nearly 50 years producing an acclaimed six-volume work on the Fourth Republic. Her own life held plenty of drama of its own.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/17/19
Why you don’t need to be French or Catholic to mourn the Notre Dame fire
by Kisha G. Tracy
The cathedral is an important part of our shared cultural heritage.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/16/19
The story behind the towering Notre Dame spire and the 30-year-old architect commissioned to rebuild it
Less than a week before fire tore through Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a repair crew brought down religious statues for the first time in more than a century.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/15/19
A history of great cathedrals that have been lost to fire and war
Notre Dame is one in a long line of cathedrals that have been ravaged by fire or war.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
4/16/19
Notre Dame was in ruins. Victor Hugo’s novel about a hunchback saved it.
France has rebuilt its iconic cathedral before.
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