Steven Ungar and Tom Conley, editors

Identity Papers
Contested Nationhood in Twentieth-Century France

 

Examines the interplay of national identity and cultural practices in France today.

What does citizenship mean? What is the process of "naturalization" one goes through in becoming a citizen, and what is its connection to assimilation? How do the issues of identity raised by this process manifest themselves in culture? These questions, and the way they arise in contemporary France, are the focus of this diverse collection.

The essays in this volume range in subject from fiction and essay to architecture and film. Among the topics discussed are the 1937 Exposition Universelle; films dealing with Vichy France; François Truffaut's Histoire d'Adèle H.; the war of Algerian independence; and nation building under François Mitterrand.

"This volume explores not only French nationhood, but also recent reorientations of French studies in the US." —The French Review

Contributors: Anne Donadey, Elizabeth Ezra, Richard J. Golsan, Lynn A. Higgins, T. Jefferson Kline, Panivong Norindr, Shanny Peer, Rosemarie Scullion, David H. Slavin, Philip H. Solomon; Florianne Wild.

Steven Ungar is professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Iowa and author of Scandal and Aftereffect: Blanchot and France since 1930 (1995). Tom Conley is professor of French at Harvard University.

OUT OF PRINT

312 pages 5 7/8 x 9 (1996)