Rutgers to Host Prestigious French Historical Studies Conference April 3-5

French history, art and culture will come alive at Rutgers and in downtown New Brunswick from April 3 through April 5, when the Society for French Historical Studies holds its 54th annual conference here.

In recognition of the strength of Rutgers’ graduate program in French history, the society began asking 10 years ago whether Rutgers would host the conference, said Jennifer M. Jones, associate professor of history, who is planning the conference with Matt Matsuda, professor of history and dean of the College Avenue Campus.

A decade ago, Jones demurred. “I thought, ‘hmm, do people really want to come to New Brunswick?’ ” Now, she couldn’t be happier to be sharing the Hub City with colleagues from across the country. “New Brunswick is a really interesting place; it’s a great destination. I’m proud to show both the campus and downtown.”

The conference, expected to draw about 350 North American scholars of French history, will begin Thursday evening, April 3, with a celebration of a major show devoted to the 19th-century French artist Honoré Daumier at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum on the College Avenue Campus. It will convene Friday and Saturday, April 4 and April 5, at the nearby Hyatt Regency in downtown New Brunswick.

In keeping with the theme “Engaged History,” papers were sought that combine historical and political analysis with discussions of social justice and human rights. Daumier, for example, was “one of the most politically engaged artists of the 19th century,” Jones said, and the Zimmerli exhibit is appropriately titled “Honoré Daumier and la Maison Aubert: Political and Social Satire in Paris.” Edouard Papet, a curator at the Orsay Museum in Paris, will open the Daumier exhibit with a talk.

Other featured presenters include the Friday luncheon speaker, Myriam Cottias, of the National Scientific Research Center and director of an international research group on slavery based at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. Cottias is the author of numerous books and edited collections on gender, slavery and historical memory, and most recently a filmmaker (Tropiques Amers, 2007).

Denis Crouzet, professor at the Sorbonne and an internationally known scholar of religion, violence, historiography and apocalyptical thought, will speak Saturday. Later that day he will join his friend and collaborator, the renowned scholar Natalie Zemon Davis, professor emerita, Princeton and Toronto universities, for an informal discussion of the meaning of the conference theme, “Engaged History.”

Rutgers’ history department is strong in French history. The faculty includes Jones, who focuses her work on the 17th and 18th centuries, and modern French historians Matsuda and Bonnie G. Smith, Board of Governors chair of history.  The department is “a major a center of training for graduate students in French history,” many of whom are coming to the conference to meet French history scholars from other North American universities who will be attending, Jones said.

The conference, sponsored by The School of Arts and Sciences and Department of History in New Brunswick, is co-sponsored by the Rutgers French department, Princeton and New York universities, the University of Pennsylvania and Barnard College. It was partially underwritten by the French embassy in New York City.

“We’ve had lots of fun organizing this together,” Jones said. “Scientists collaborate all the time, but historians don’t do this so much.”

To register, go to www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jemjones/sfhs2008.html or contact Jones at (732) 932-6727 or jemjones@rci.rutgers.edu. Secondary school teachers may attend at a reduced fee, and the conference is free for all Rutgers graduate and undergraduate students.