French Cultural Studies current issue

Building a Sexological Concept Through Fictional Narrative: The Case of `Frigidity' in Late Nineteenth-Century France

Cryle, P. — 2008-05-16

This paper raises a question about the role of literary texts in intellectual and cultural history, taking the particular example of middle-brow novels published by a set of Parisian publishers during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. It locates those novels with respect to medical writing about sexual pathology, with a particular focus on the notion of female frigidity, which was something of a new topic at that time. The Parisian publishers' catalogues contained a range of texts from popular medical `libraries' to outright pornography, but the greater part of the books they offered for sale were more or less respectable novels with some intellectual pretensions. The paper identifies some commonplaces about frigidity that emerged at the time, and shows that middle-brow novels sometimes led medical writing in the production of those commonplaces, notably by their construction and rehearsal of typical narratives about women characters.

The Quai Branly Museum: Political Transition, Memory and Globalisation in Contemporary France

Thomas, D. — 2008-05-16

The Parisian landscape was repeatedly altered during the second half of the twentieth century by various presidential `grands projets' or `grands travaux', most notably the Grande Arche of La Défense, the Bastille Opera, and the Institut du Monde Arabe. In June 2006, during Jacques Chirac's final months in office, the latest of these projects (and the first of the twenty-first century) was inaugurated, namely the Musée Quai Branly. This museum, dedicated to the arts and civilisations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, has triggered discussion in a broad interdisciplinary context. This essay endeavours to contextualise these debates and accordingly to provide a more nuanced understanding of contemporary France as it confronts its position, status and role according to the coordinates of an increasingly globalised world.

Les Visiteurs and the Quixotic Text

Mcmorran, W. — 2008-05-16

The article offers a comparative analysis of two stories of knights in anachronistic conflict with the modern world: Cervantes' Don Quixote, a novel that continues to live a rich afterlife in contemporary Western culture, and Poiré's Les Visiteurs, the most successful French film comedy of the 1990s. It explores parallels between Cervantes' parodying of chivalric romance and Poiré's engagement with heritage cinema, and finds a common ambivalence in these texts towards both the romanticised past and the mundane present.

Finding France on Film: Chocolat, Amelie and Le Divorce

Durham, C. A. — 2008-05-16

Three contemporary films, Lasse Hallström's Chocolat (2000), Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001), and James Ivory's Le Divorce (2003), provide an especially promising context in which to explore the complex nature of cultural representation and reception at a time of renewed conflict and misunderstanding between France and the United States. All three films raise important questions related to national identity and to audience response. All three also confirm that the romantic comedy set in a picturesque Paris or a quaint rural village is one place where we can still expect to find France on film, whether the film is made in the United States or in France.

Of GMOs, McDomination and Foreign Fat: Contemporary Franco-American Food Fights

Willging, J. — 2008-05-16

This essay examines some recent developments in the food market and in eating habits in France and the anxieties that these developments — blamed by many on the forces of `Americanisation' — appear to be provoking among many French men and women. The specific developments it discusses are (1) the increasing pressure by the American government to force France and the European Union to import genetically modified organisms and hormone-treated beef; (2) the astonishing growth of the fast-food industry in France over the last several years in particular; and (3) the equally astonishing increase over the same period in the obesity rate there, especially among children. This essay argues that the presumed Americanisation of one of the most emphatically and enduringly French aspects of that nation's identity, its cuisine (and perhaps, more importantly, its culinary customs) has proven even more difficult for the French to `swallow' than that of other national domains, such as industry, cinema or even politics. This is so because this particular American `invasion' seems to constitute a penetration not only of national and local borders and public and private spaces, but also, more alarmingly, of individual, biological bodies.

The Alliance Francaise, Empire and America

Gosnell, J. — 2008-05-16

The Alliance Française was founded more than a century ago and is the largest non-profit-making cultural institution in the world. Its longstanding mission has been to foster global understanding of the French language and to promote increased dialogue between French and other cultures. Since 1902, the Federation of Alliances Françaises USA has facilitated American access to French language and culture. The American Alliance has been marked by the republican and colonial ethos of the late nineteenth-century organisation. A network of Alliance chapters was established within postcolonial Francophone communities in the United States in the early twentieth century. The institution might be thought of, consequently, as helping to preserve a French cultural heritage dating back four hundred years. By giving voice to different constituencies within the French diasporic family, and by creating spaces for cultural exchange, the Alliance has helped to define the contours of New World Francophone identities.

Notice Board

Looseley, D. — 2008-05-16