Revisioning French Culture brings together a striking group of leading intellectuals and scholars to explore new avenues of research in French and Francophone Studies. Covering the medieval period through the twenty-first century, this volume presents investigations into a vast array of subjects, with global Francophonie as its primary focal point.

Revisioning French Culture brings together a striking group of leading intellectuals and scholars to explore new avenues of research in French and Francophone Studies. Covering the medieval period through the twenty-first century, this volume presents investigations into a vast array of subjects. Revisioning French Culture grapples with topics vital to the contemporary cultural landscape, including universalism, globalization, the idea of Francophonie, and religious and secular identity. This essay collection furthermore transcends and illuminates the contemporary by delving into matters that have long resonated in the humanities and letters, such as death, war, trauma, power and politics, notions of the truth, conceptions of the self, and modes of reading and writing. With contributions by a number of figures known across the humanities and the social sciences, Revisioning French Culture explores the foundations of the French and Francophone world, providing cultural, political, and historical context for the crisis facing democracy and liberalism around the world today. These essays were assembled in honor of Lawrence D. Kritzman, whose writing and editorial work in French studies inspired the wide-ranging themes examined here.

The essays in this volume contribute diversely towards a revision and a reconceptualization of nineteenth-century France, with many adopting interdisciplinary methodologies attentive to the interplay between literature, history, art, popular and high culture, politics and science.

More than 700 alphabetically organized entries by an international team of contributors provide a fascinating survey of French culture post 1945. Entries include: * advertising * Beur cinema * Coco Chanel * decolonization * écriture feminine * football * francophone press * gay activism * Seuil * youth culture Entries range from short factual/biographical pieces to longer overview articles. All are extensively cross-referenced and longer entries are 'facts-fronted' so important information is clear at a glance. It includes a thematic contents list, extensive index and suggestions for further reading. The Encyclopedia will provide hours of enjoyable browsing for all francophiles, and essential cultural context for students of French, Modern History, Comparative European Studies and Cultural Studies.

For a long time, France and its culture have been one and the same. However, of this past glory, all that is left today is navel-gazing, nostalgia and timidity. Covering art, fashion, philosophy, literature and cinema, Donald Morrison argues that French culture no longer has the kind of international standing it once did.