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The Association seeks to promote a closer understanding of French culture and society and holds an annual conference on an interdisciplinary theme, with speakers invited from Britain, France and further a field.
ASMCF Conference 2008
Constructing French Identity / Identities
ASMCF Annual Conference 2008
University of Manchester 5-6 September 2008
Confirmed keynote speaker: Sami Naïr - Université Paris VIII; Institut d'Etudes et de Recherches Europe-Méditerranée -IEREM
This conference will explore the emergence and expression of multiple, plural and divided French identities. A core theme will be the ways in which such developments have interacted with enduring concerns to assert a more unified vision of what it means to be French - most notably, in the modern and contemporary periods, through the concept of republican citizenship. As domestic processes of social, political, economic and cultural change have combined with increased involvement with 'the other' through post-colonial immigration, European integration and new forms of globalization, these issues have come to the fore with particular acuity since 1945, but they lend themselves equally to historical investigation.
The conference should therefore appeal to specialists working in the social sciences, literary, cultural, film and media studies, politics and history, as well as to comparatists.
It is intended to organise the conference around 'themed' streams of panels, running in parallel across two days. These will build on the Association's interdisciplinary strengths and encourage colleagues to engage with common issues and topics approached through different disciplinary perspectives. Suggested themes are:
- French identity / identities and political representations
- French identity / identities and cultural representations
- French identity / identities and processes of Europeanisation
- French identity / identities in the Francophone world
Within each of these streams, papers should engage with specific debates around notions of ethnicity, class, gender and generation, and how these affect the construction of 'identity'. However, within any one stream individual panel sessions may be organised within a shared disciplinary framework.
ASMCF Conference 2007
Mapping France
ASMCF conference, 6-8 September 2007
The University of Reading
Conference Report
This year's ASMCF annual conference took place at the University of Reading from 6th to 8th September. The theme Mapping France generated a wide range of treatments and sub-topics not limited to areas of geography and politics but including social and cultural aspects spanning a period from the mid 19th century to the present day.
The scene was set by the Peter Morris Lecture, this year billed as the opening plenary of the conference and delivered by Hugh Clout whose title 'Mapping France: toward an égogéographie?', with an emphasis on historical geography, charted not only changes in France and its regions according to historical events, but his own engagement with France through the medium of his research and teaching.
The plenary session on the middle day of the conference brought together speakers from the Institut National d'études Démographiques (Paris) and from the Universities of Rouen and Lille, providing a rich centrepiece to the conference with detailed explications and illustrations of voting patterns across a range of geographic loci, be they regional, rural, urban, suburban, with reference to socio cultural shifts and changes in party political terrain. Hervé le Bras's 'Des régions aux agglomérations: la mutation actuelle des tempéraments français en famille' et en politique paved the way for Michel Bucci's 'Entre cultures régionales, ségrégations socio-spatiales et recompositions urbaines: les nouvelles complexités de la carte électorale française', with Frédéric Sawicki perhaps presaging the lanterne rouge status of the French Communist Party in his 'Vers la fin des terroirs militants? Le cas des partis de gauche'. The combined effect was to plunge delegates into the very thick of this year's electoral experiences in terms of their geographical significance.
The main body of the conference was based on parallel sessions including Mapping War and Occupation which covered issues such as The French Exodus of 1940, Post War geographies of le Débarquement, friendly fire in the liberation of Le Havre and a literary depiction of the experience of Occupation in Corsica; Mapping French Sport took us on a tempo-spatial journey from Belle époque rugby and violence to the Tour de France via Paris Saint-Germain. Geography and Political Behaviour looked at André Siegfried and the invention of French political tradition, the changing geography of the French Left, parliamentary outcomes during the years of alternance, and tradition and progress in a movement of business leaders. Paris-Province (1) ranged from the role of Paris vis-à-vis France, the regionalization of May 68, and television's mapping of the French electorate in the 2007 elections, to the mapping of De Gaulle onto French street names. Paris-Province (2) included papers on Second Empire Savoy, language management for Corsican, how the Right became the main political force in the Moselle (1918-1934), and state planners, immigration and the crucible of national modernization in the Moselle. L'Hexagone et au-delà: identités de la France, d'outre-mer et d'ailleurs ranged from Brittany as a 'petite colonie' and the new Quai Branly museum, through a remapping of Duras's Indochina to the mapping of la Francophonie.
Other sessions placed the emphasis on geography and institutions at home, alongside colonial and post-colonial history. Geography and France's Institutions brought together Decentralization in France, European integration as a context for the political mobilization of regional minorities, and the mapping the RPR takeover of the Senate 1977-1998. Mapping Colonial and Postcolonial History reached out to West Africa, the Congo and Algeria, including the atrocities of la colonne infernale Voulet Chanoine, the forgotten African troops in the Liberation of France in the Second World War, the shifting conceptions of a French imperial 'map-as-logo', and Franco-Algerian Relations in the Postcolonial World.
Of the two sessions devoted to Paris-Banlieues: Reality and (Cinematographic) Representation, the first concentrated on the nature of the grands ensembles, the issues raised by the quartiers sensibles and their implications for the French Republic, including attention to the impact in this sphere of the movement Ni Putes ni Soumises. Session 2 in this strand focused on cinematic representation, with papers on Jacques Rivette and his remapping of Paris, and on filming the banlieues, Paris and the Provinces. Writers Map France (1) included papers on anarchy in late nineteenth-century France, the French polar de province and the politics of political difference in the works of Balzac. Session two centred on works of nineteenth-century French women, referring to Flora Tristan's tour de France 1843-44, George Sand's aim to unite capital and countryside during 1848 and the Pauline Riland's mapping of Gendered Political Communication.
The conference and ASMCF are pleased to express their gratitude for financial support from Routledge/Taylor and Francis who hosted the drinks party on the first day, and also to the French Embassy for their sponsorship of speakers and the wine reception on the second evening. It was a particular pleasure to have the company of Madame Edwige Girardin, Conseillère Culturelle de l'Ambassade de France, at this juncture and during dinner.
Finally heartfelt thanks are due to Professor Andrew Knapp and his colleagues at Reading University not only for the stimulating programme which delegates enjoyed, but also for their excellent hosting and hospitality throughout the conference.
Report by Maggie Allison
Past conferences:
1988 Beliefs in France
1989 War and Society in 20th-century France
1990 France and Europe
1991 France: Culture and Society Identity
1992 France: Nation and Regions
1993 France: Violence and Conflict
1994 France: From Cold War to the New World Order
1995 France: Population and People
1996 France: The Mitterrand Era in Perspective
1997 France: Fin(s) de siècle(s)
1998 The Fifth republic Forty Years On: actions, dialogues and discourses
1999 Reinventing France: Towards the new millennium
2000 Shifting Frontiers of France and Francophonie
2001 la France Exceptionnelle?
2002 At the Border: Margins and peripheries in Modern France
2003 France and Britain: cross influences, mutual representations, comparisons/ France et Grande-Bretagne: interactions, représentations mutuelles, comparaisons
2004 Discourse, Persuasion and Public Perception in France
2005 Forces for radical social change in France today
2006 Liberté,Egalité, Fraternité: the Concept of Rights in Modern and Contemporary France