Postgraduate Study Day

The Association organises an annual Postgraduate Study Day in collaboration with the Society for the Study of French History (SSFH). This is an occasion to share your work in a relaxed, convivial setting, meeting other postgraduate researchers and senior academics in the fields of modern and contemporary French studies and French historical studies. The programme also includes a roundtable discussion on career development, with the opportunity to discuss your research and gain valuable insight from experts working in and beyond academia. We also work closely with other organisations, such as the Society for French Studies (SFS) and the Association des études françaises et francophones d’Irlande (ADEFFI), offering a programme of training sessions and reading aimed at postgraduates throughout the academic year.

RUPTURE(S) – University of Cambridge, 1^st March 2025

Ruptures: moments when space and time are felt to break, when the historical present becomes clearly splintered, when relations and orientations are transformed, and memories are radically altered. These moments may give rise to new possibilities, scenarios and alternative futures. They present either a sharp crack through history or arrive so softly one doesn’t realise change is happening. They may be as vast as international conflicts, revolutions or ecological crises, or as minutely local as a death in the family, the break up of a community or a turning point in one’s own life.

2025 brings with it the anniversaries and legacies of historical ruptures: the émeutes of 2005, the loi Veil of 1975, the end of the Second World War in 1945, and the institution of laïcité in 1905. These moments continue to structure both the popular and historiographical imagination, constituting touchstones from which to create new perspectives and challenge old hierarchies. These questions resonate, too, with the critical exigencies of our present conjuncture, compelled as we are to address the violence(s) of colonialism, neofascism and neoliberal capital. Thinking with ​“rupture(s)” invites us to consider our own responsibilities toward, and complicity in, those structures aimed at division and oppression – and, by extension, how we might mobilise against them.

Through this Study Day, we aim to ask whether the lens of ​“rupture(s)” constitutes a viable hermeneutic through which to understand historical events and cultural works. Or, on the contrary, is it a post-facto product of calling an event ​“historical”? Does scale or perspective impact our idea of what makes a rupture? Do ruptures represent unbridgeable gaps, or should they be understood as fluid processes?