For precise schedule of offerings see department catalog during pre-enrollment week each semester.

This course focuses on the history of France in terms of larger global processes, looking at the ways in which France has been shaped by interactions with places and people outside of its borders, and conversely, how French people, enterprises and ideas have contributed to the making of the wider world. France was a major imperial power in both the early modern and modern periods, establishing colonies in North America and the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. As a consequence of this colonial history, French is today the fifth most-spoken language in the world. The seminar will focus on recent publications drawn from both early-modern and modern periods. Among our leading questions will be how we might write French history, whether in the “hexagon” or in former colonial spaces, that accounts for the particularity of trans-regional French institutions and the multicultural and multiracial quality of its populations. We ask, what does “Global France” mean historically, and who has contested the meanings drawn from France’s multivalent history?

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