Contemporary French Feminism

*Derrière le niqab.* By Agnès de Féo. (Malakoff : Armand Colin, 2020). Library of Congress General Collections.

There has been an awakening in the first two decades of the 21st century to the significance of the French overseas empire. The affects of the French empire on colonized peoples has come under increased scrutiny by modern scholars. Historian Jennifer Boittin focuses on the contact between continental France and colonial spaces in West Africa, the Caribbean, North Africa and French Indochina. In her recent work, Undesirable : passionate mobility and women's defiance of French colonial policing, 1919-1952, she has expanded her study to include how feminists play into these already complicated relationships when addressing the issue of the hijab, for example. In 2007 France banned the headscarves worn by many Muslim women as it was seen to be contrary to the cultural mores of metropolitan France. As in past centuries, women's choice on how to dress themselves came under attack. The task before France today is complex as it attempts to grapple with how their color-blind notion of universalism fails to account for differences of religion, culture, and race. Scholar and filmaker Mame-Fatou Niang co-authored a study with Julien Suaudeau aptly titled, Universalisme as well as the study, Identités françaises : banlieues, féminités et universalisme. Journalist, filmmaker and self-described anti-racist advocate, Rokhaya Diallo explored these issues with co-author Grace Ly in the 2022 book, Kiffe ta race : explorer les questions raciales sans tabou. In this book, the title of which uses the popular word kiffe for "to like," the authors discuss a variety of race issues in France and in particular the way France recognizes — or fails to recognize — those with hyphenated identities and the minority Asian population. In her 2019 book La France, tu l'aimes ou tu la fermes?, Diallo confronts sexism, racism, the legacy of colonialism, French identity, and the misuse of secularism (laïcité) in France. She also discusses cultural and political topics in America, with chapters on the Black Lives Matter movement, the American series "Mad Men", and the Oscars among other topics. Diallo is also a regular contributor the Washington Post Global Opinions.

The past twenty years have also seen the slow introduction of women’s studies and gender studies courses into French universities. French academics and researchers studying issues of gender and sexuality have organized since the 1990s in collaborative research groups and consortia. Consortia such as the Centre d'Enseignement, de Documentation et de Recherche pour les Etudes Féministes. External or CEDRIF (Center for Teaching, Research and Documentation for Feminist Studies) and Marché du travail et genre External or MAGE, work on the history of gender and sexuality as well as on new issues at the forefront of French feminist activism and intersectionality in a French as well as an international context. Les Cahiers du CEDREF External is a multidisciplinary feminist journal published annually. The journal is attached to the Center for Teaching, Documentation and Research for Feminist Studies of the University of Paris Diderot. It is specially oriented towards cutting-edge research (postcolonial and transnational feminism) and the translation of founding texts in the field, as well as new research in feminist studies.

Le combat féministe se gagne devant le panier de linge sale: "The feminist fight is won in front of the dirty laundry basket" -Titou Lecoq, Liberées!

Outside of academia, the growing accessibility of digital media has transformed the methods of communication and organization among French feminists from a primarily physical print culture to a born-digital culture of feminist communications. Along with the rise of social media in the mid-2000s, contemporary feminist activists and educators in France have access to a wider audience. Feminist issues have become more widely supported in France than at any other point in history, and feminism as an area of study and discourse has expanded to engage with other disciplines intersectionally. Today’s feminists engage with disability studies, antiracist activism, queer theory, and cultural inclusivity in a wide variety of forums. LGBT rights in France External have made strides in the past decades, granting not only recognition of same-sex marriage, but also winning gains in the area of adoption and family planning. In 2020 the Senate approved a bill granting lesbian couples access to assisted reproductive technology (procréation médicalement assistée, PMA) and this bill took effect in 2021. A new generation of feminists that have come of age around the mouvement #metoo External is more conscious of the choices and power that they have. A significant part of women’s studies in France has turned towards studying these parallel feminist movements. French activism and political work have focused on amplifying the unique and intersectional feminist issues faced by formerly colonized populations as well as their diasporic communities in France.

*Le génie lesbien.* By Alice Coffin. (Paris: Grasset, 2020). Library of Congress General Collections.

The sources for studying French feminist culture have expanded exponentially since the 1990s, both in terms of new media and in terms of increased access to historical documents through digitization. While feminist thought, scholarship, and activism still circulate in the form of print books, journals, conference papers, and newspapers rooted in French feminist culture, they can increasingly be found on websites, blogs, in graphic novels, comics and through street art and podcasts. Comic designers such as Pénélope Bagieu grapple with feminist issues through her various characters in print and film. Titiou Lecoq uses her blog (Girlsandgeeks) as a forum to discuss life's trials and collaborates with Slate.fr to take on serious issues such as féminicides and outlines her views in her book Libérées. Accounts on Instagram, such as that of Fannyvella, can be a way for women to communicate about issues they encounter. Marion Pillas, founder of the 2021 magazine La Déferlante External (Breaking Wave), points to a new feminist media that is beginning to emerge in France. Podcasts such as Les coquilles sur la table External (Balls on the table) later became a book by Victoire Tuaillon discussing masculine identity in the 21st century. Concepts such as "Ecofeminism" and "Mom Power" are discussed in podcasts such as Un podcast à soi External. Feminist activist Lauren Bastide hosts the popular La Poudre External where she interviews important figures. Online magazines such as Les Glorieuses External and ChEEk Magazine External are making their presence known with popular followings and a new tone and approach to feminism. Meanwhile mainstream magazines such as Elle, Marie Claire and Vogue are making changes in the images they promote and the content they publish. Featuring writers from Africa, Asia and North America is helping to make the feminist movement global in scope. It is important to point out that though the Second Wave had reached the end of its peak by the 1990s, women’s rights and the wider acceptance of feminism that was growing in France took root in different ways across the French-speaking world, often as a direct result of French imperialism and its consequences.

Fadela Amara's call to action decades ago with the movement Ni Putes Ni Soumises External, and her book Taking French Feminism to the Streets, underscores the complicated work of reconciling the inequities that face the predominantly Muslim minorities in France's banlieues. Her book aims at inclusivity of women of the quartiers (neighborhoods) and her manifesto is devoted to passionate but peaceful protest. Still, the message has come under criticism as a means for hijacking feminism in order to justify prejudiced policies in France such as making the veil illegal. An issue that affects all women in France is that of femicide, the murder of a woman on account of her gender. One of the most effective campaigns in France, Collage féministe External, involves collages that are put up on walls in French cities to draw attention to violence against women External. To many feminists in France, the need for awareness and visibility is paramount. Feminist activist and lesbian Alice Coffin argues in her book, Le génie lesbien External, that lesbians in France through the ages have practiced a sort of "discretion" that prevented the "coming out" process seen more in the United States. She cites the separation between private and public life in France as being at fault, adding that it was both inspiring and disheartening to find that most of her female role models from French history were lesbians, and yet that was not mentioned as part of their identity. Coffin was influenced by the LGBTQ movement in America and her book has been pivotal in opening the discussion yet again around the fact that community-based ideologies are often viewed as potentially problematic for the French nation. She's not the only French thinker to find the United States to be a more receptive proving ground. Radical French writer Monique Wittig found a teaching position not in France — but at the University of Arizona — and was published in the United States 20 years before being published in France. Other contemporary scholars have found themselves in the same situation; securing jobs in a variety of departments in American Universities. France seems slower to embrace some of these movements and authors such as Jean Gabard discuss the place of men in this philosophy he calls néo-feminism External. These debates continue to play out in the French media and in communities throughout France.

*Kiffe ta race.* By Rokhaya Diallo and Grace Ly. (Paris: First Editions, 2021). Library of Congress General Collections.

Below is a timeline of some of the major developments in French feminism and women’s studies over the past 30 years, as well as trends in contemporary feminist scholarship and search terms that may help in locating French sources on these topics.

Notable Dates:

1990: The Gayssot Law is passed allowing judges to impose penalties on those convicted of racist crimes and instituting an annual National Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) report on racism
1991: Edith Cresson becomes France’s first woman Prime Minister
1992: Francoise Gaspard, Claude Servan-Schreiber and Anne le Gall publish Au Pouvoir Citoyennes (Women Citizens to Power), arguing for 50/50 parity in political representation
1992: workplace sexual harassment is subject to legal consequences
1993: “Manifesto of the 577” published in Le Monde shows support for gender parity in government
1994: Marital rape is criminalized
1995: World Conference on Women in Beijing; beginning of the “third wave” of feminism in the West
1996: “Manifesto of the ten for parity” published in L’Express, signed by prominent women figures including Simone Veil and Edith Cresson
1998: Prime Minister Jospin and President Jacques Chirac jointly sponsor an amendment to Article 3 of the Constitution: ‘Statutes shall promote equal access by women and men to elective office and positions’
1999: Civil solidarity pacts (Pacte civil de solidarite or PACS) extended to LGBTQ+ couples
2000: The Parity Law is passed, requiring parties to endorse an equal number of men and women candidates in municipal, legislative and European elections
2010s: Beginning of the “fourth wave” of feminism, growing use of social media for feminist causes and information
2011: France bans face coverings, including the burqa and niqab, in public spaces
2013: Mariage pour tous marriage equality for same-sex couples is passed
2016: Muslim woman in Nice forced by French police to remove her burkini External following the ban of full-body swimsuits in 15 towns across France
2018: Law against outrages sexistes (‘street harassment’) introduced by Equality Minister Marlène Schiappa is passed by the Senate
2019: Tous égaux, tous alliés (All equal, all allied) campaign launched by the Ministry of Education to combat anti-LGBT bullying in school
2021: Lesbian couples granted legal access to procréation médicalement assistée, PMA, assisted reproductive technology.
March 8: La Journée internationale des droits des femmes External (International Women's Rights Day)

*Notre colère sur vos murs.* Photos by Tay Calenda and Léa Michaëlis. (Paris: Denoël, 2021). Library of Congress General Collections.

Search Terms & Phrases

Communautarisme: Identity politics
L’emancipation: Empowerment
Interdisciplinarité: refers to the communication between two or more disciplines (in academia), for example the interactions between critical race theory and feminist theory
Féminicide: Femicide refers to violence against women
La liberté d'importuner: The freedom to bother is an expression from an early 2018 manifesto written by women who were concerned that the #Balance ton porc movement would prevent men from hitting on women
La charge mentale: The mental load is a current French and American feminist issue that often alludes to the disparity between men and women in the amount of invisible labor involved in managing a household and family. It was brought into the limelight in May 2017 by a blog-post-turned-graphic-novel entitled Fallait Demander (‘You should have asked’), by the blogger Emma

Social Media

#MoiAussi: #MeToo External
#Moiaussifemmesnoires
#MoiAussiTheatre
#MoiAussiIncest
#Noustoutes
#NousToutesHarcelement

For further information see the book, French feminisms 1975 and after : new readings, new texts by Margaret Atack, Alison S. Fell, Diana Holmes and Imogen Long.

The collections of the Library of Congress tell the rich and diverse story of LGBTQ+ life in America and around the world. For more information on resources on LGBTQIA+ Studies, see the LGBTQIA+ Studies: A Resource Guide and Library Resources on LGBTQ+.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

African Diasporic Women's Narratives by Simone A. James Alexander
Call Number: PS153.N5 A3986 2014
ISBN: 9780813049823
Published/Created: 2014
Winner of the College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award "Brilliant. Alexander helps us to understand the complexities of race, gender, sexuality, migration, and identity as they intersect with creativity. A must-read for those interested in women's writing today."--Renée Larrier, author of Autofiction and Advocacy in the Francophone Caribbean "Critically engages current topical issues with sophisticated scholarly readings. There is a tone of the transgressive that gives this work the kind of edge that always provides transcendence."--Carole Boyce Davies, author of Caribbean Spaces "An authoritative and original study, characterized by meticulously researched scholarship, which focuses on the female body across a fascinating corpus of literary production in the Caribbean and elsewhere. This refreshing and effective interdisciplinary approach extends the boundaries of traditional literary analysis."--E. Anthony Hurley, author of Through a Black Veil Using feminist and womanist theory, Simone Alexander analyzes literary works that focus on the black female body as the physical and metaphorical site of migration. She shows that over time black women have used their bodily presence to complicate and challenge a migratory process often forced upon them by men or patriarchal society. Through in-depth study of selective texts by Audre Lorde, Edwidge Danticat, Maryse Condé, and Grace Nichols, Alexander challenges the stereotypes ascribed to black female sexuality, subverting its assumed definition as diseased, passive, or docile. She also addresses issues of embodiment as she analyzes how women's bodies are read and seen; how bodies "perform" and are performed upon; how they challenge and disrupt normative standards. A multifaceted contribution to studies of gender, race, sexuality, and disability issues, African Diasporic Women's Narratives engages a range of issues as it grapples with the complex interconnectedness of geography, citizenship, and nationalism.
Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality, 1848-2016 by Félix Germain (Editor); Silyane Larcher (Editor); T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (Foreword by)
Call Number: HQ1236.5.F8 B54 2018
ISBN: 9781496201270
Published/Created: 2018
Black French Women and the Struggle for Equality,1848-2016 explores how black women in France itself, the French Caribbean, Gorée, Dakar, Rufisque, and Saint-Louis experienced and reacted to French colonialism and how gendered readings of colonization, decolonization, and social movements cast new light on the history of French colonization and of black France. In addition to delineating the powerful contributions of black French women in the struggle for equality, contributors also look at the experiences of African American women in Paris and in so doing integrate into colonial and postcolonial conversations the strategies black women have engaged in negotiating gender and race relations à la française. Drawing on research by scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and countries, this collection offers a fresh, multidimensional perspective on race, class, and gender relations in France and its former colonies, exploring how black women have negotiated the boundaries of patriarchy and racism from their emancipation from slavery to the second decade of the twenty-first century.
Brazen by Pénélope Bagieu (Illustrator); Pénélope Bagieu (Illustrator)
Call Number: PN6747.B34 C8513 2018
ISBN: 9781626728691
Published/Created: 2018
Throughout history and across the globe, one characteristic connects the daring women of Brazen: their indomitable spirit. With her characteristic wit and dazzling drawings, celebrated graphic novelist Pénélope Bagieu profiles the lives of these feisty female role models, some world famous, some little known. From Nellie Bly to Mae Jemison or Josephine Baker to Naziq al-Abid, the stories in this comic biography are sure to inspire the next generation of rebel ladies. This title has Common Core connections. 2019 Eisner Award Winner for Best U.S. Edition of International Material. [Culottées]
Breaking the Silence by Fadela Amara; Helen Harden Chenut (Introduction by); Sylvia Zappi
Call Number: HQ1237.5.F8 A4313 2006
ISBN: 0520246209
Published/Created: 2006
Born in France of Algerian parents, Fadela Amara is a human rights activist who speaks with both a personal and a collective voice. This book is a passionate account of her struggle to found the movement called "Ni Putes Ni Soumises" (Neither Whore Nor Submissive), aimed at shattering the law of silence about violence against women within French suburban communities. The questions Amara raises are part of a broader agenda to open contemporary French society to greater ethnic and cultural diversity. These issues also pose problems of national identity and the defense of secularism for the state. As France increasingly confronts such tensions and the emergence of Islamic movements, French cities face problems of unemployment, racial and ethnic discrimination, and violence. Amara's eloquent call for social and gender equality underscores a host of interconnected issues, including France's colonial past and the degradation of the suburbs into ghettos that have progressively marginalized immigrant and working-class communities. Amara and her co-workers have challenged the French Republic's leaders using a strategy that champions republican secular values and stresses the language of universalism to advance individual rights. Women's rights are human rights, they argue, thus casting their demands for equality in terms of a broader struggle for democratic freedoms. Moving, candid, and timely, Breaking the Silence created a sensation when it was published in France. Fadela Amara is currently State Minister for Urban Affairs, charged with the rehabilitation of the very ghettos she describes.
Colonial Metropolis by Jennifer Anne Boittin
Call Number: DC717 .B65 2010
ISBN: 9780803225459
Published/Created: 2010
World War I gave colonial migrants and French women unprecedented access to the workplaces and nightlife of Paris. After the war they were expected to return without protest to their homes--either overseas or metropolitan. Neither group, however, was willing to be discarded. Between the world wars, the mesmerizing capital of France's colonial empire attracted denizens from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. Paris became not merely their home but also a site for political engagement. Colonial Metropolis tells the story of the interactions and connections of these black colonial migrants and white feminists in the social, cultural, and political world of interwar Paris. It explores why and how both were denied certain rights, such as the vote, how they suffered from sensationalist depictions in popular culture, and how they pursued parity in ways that were often interpreted as politically subversive.
The Conflict by Elisabeth Badinter
Call Number: HQ759 .B22313 2011
ISBN: 9780805094145
Published/Created: 2012
In the tradition of Backlash and The Time Bind, The Conflict, identifies a surprising setback to women's freedom: progressive modern motherhood Elisabeth Badinter has for decades been in the vanguard of the European fight for women's equality. Now, in an explosive new book, she points her finger at a most unlikely force undermining the status of women: liberal motherhood, in thrall to all that is "natural." Attachment parenting, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, and especially breast-feeding--these hallmarks of contemporary motherhood have succeeded in tethering women to the home and family to an extent not seen since the 1950s. Badinter argues that the taboos now surrounding epidurals, formula, disposable diapers, cribs--and anything that distracts a mother's attention from her offspring--have turned childrearing into a singularly regressive force. In sharp, engaging prose, Badinter names a reactionary shift that is intensely felt but has not been clearly articulated until now, a shift that America has pioneered. She reserves special ire for the orthodoxy of the La Leche League--an offshoot of conservative Evangelicalism--showing how on-demand breastfeeding, with all its limitations, curtails women's choices. Moreover, the pressure to provide children with 24/7 availability and empathy has produced a generation of overwhelmed and guilt-laden mothers--one cause of the West's alarming decline in birthrate.
Contemporary French Feminism by Kelly Oliver (Editor); Lisa Walsh (Editor)
Call Number: HQ1613 .C745 2004
ISBN: 0199248346
Published/Created: 2005
Have we entered a historical moment of 'post-feminism'? This volume presents a timely and convincing 'no'. These essays demonstrate that there is a new generation of French women who take up questions of equality and difference from a position distinct from either first or second wavefeminism, a position that often attempts to move beyond the binary of equality and/or difference to a new form of the individual.
Dead End Feminism by Elisabeth Badinter; Julia Borossa (Translator)
Call Number: HQ1154 .B2513 2006
ISBN: 0745633803
Published/Created: 2006
In this provocative new book, France's leading feminist theorist launches a broadside against the way in which feminism has evolved since the 1990s. After the victories of the previous decades, during which women had made some real advances in social and political life, a new sensibility began to emerge in the 1990s which led to a reversal in the hierarchy of values. The cult of victimhood has become widespread and has affected feminism. Women are viewed as defenceless and oppressed, social violence and sexual violence are treated as the same and a finger is pointed at the guilty one: man in all his guises. But by conflating real and false victims, feminism runs the risk of misunderstanding the battles that need to be waged and of losing all credibility with the younger generation, which doesn't see things see things this way. Preoccupied by putting men on trial, the feminism of the last few years has reactivated old stereotypes and left behind the very battles that have long been its raison d'être - this, argues Badinter, is a dead end. A huge bestseller in France, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the changing relations between the sexes and our ways of thinking about sex and gender today.
Drawing (in) the Feminine by Margaret C. Flinn (Editor)
Call Number: PN6745 .D73 2024
ISBN: 9780814215142
Published/Created: 2024-02-20
Drawing (in) the Feminine celebrates and examines the richness of contemporary women's production in French and Francophone comics art and considers the history of representations made by both dominant and marginalized creators. Bridging historical and contemporary comics output, these essays illuminate the interfaces among genre, gender, and cultural history. Contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, and across a variety of methodologies and disciplinary orientations, challenge prevailing claims about the absence of women creators, characters, and readers in bande dessinée, arguing that women have always been part of its history. While still far from achieving parity with their male counterparts, female creators are occupying an increasingly significant portion of the French-language comics publishing industry, and creators of all genders are putting forth stories that reflect on the diversity and richness of women's and gender-nonconforming people's experiences. In the essays collected here, contributors push back against the ways in which the marginalization of women within bande dessinée history has overshadowed their significant contributions, extending avenues for further exploring the true diversity of a flourishing contemporary production. Contributors: Armelle Blin-Rolland, Véronique Bragard, Michelle Bumatay, Benoît Crucifix, Isabelle Delorme, Jacques Dürrenmatt, Margaret C. Flinn, Alexandra Gueydan-Turek, Jennifer Howell, Jessica Kohn, Sylvain Lesage, Catriona MacLeod, Mark McKinney.
Ethnic minority women's writing in France : publishing practices and identity formation, 1998-2005 by Claire Mouflard
ISBN: 9781498587303
Published/Created: 2021
This book examines autobiographies, autofictions, and manifestoes written by ethnic minority women writers in early twenty-first century France. In their publications, select authors denounce the ethnic hierarchies created and propagated by French institutions, and contend with the neocolonial marketing practices of key metropolitan publishers" Contents: Introduction: The "Black-Blanc-Beur" utopia and the autobiographical response -- Utopia, paratexts, and publishers -- "Beur," "Banlieue victims," and "Intégrées" : Samira Bellil, Nina Bouraoui, Nora Hamdi -- "Black," "Afro-French," and "Évoluées" : Calixthe Beyala, Bessora, Fatou Diome -- Franco-Vietnamese literature : the unspoken making of Anna Moï and Linda Lê -- Conclusion: Beyond "Black-Blanc-Beur" : negotiating labels and "littérature-monde".
Exile and Nomadism in French and Hispanic Women's Writing by Kate Averis
Call Number: PN56.5.E96 A94 2014
ISBN: 9781907975943
Published/Created: 2014
This book explores the ways in which contemporary women writers have engaged with the negotiation and representation of identity following the rupture with the established sense of self in the homeland that is brought about by exile.
Feminism's Empire by Carolyn J. Eichner
ISBN: 9781501763809
Published/Created: 2022
Feminism's Empire investigates the complex relationships between imperialisms and feminisms in the late nineteenth century and demonstrates the challenge of conceptualizing "pro-imperialist" and "anti-imperialist" as binary positions. By intellectually and spatially tracing the era's first French feminists' engagement with empire, Carolyn J. Eichner explores how feminists opposed?yet employed?approaches to empire in writing, speaking, and publishing. In differing ways, they ultimately tied forms of imperialism to gender liberation. Among the era's first anti-imperialists, French feminists were enmeshed in the hierarchies and epistemologies of empire. They likened their gender-based marginalization to imperialist oppressions. Imperialism and colonialism's gendered and sexualized racial hierarchies established categories of inclusion and exclusion that rested in both universalism and ideas of "nature" that presented colonized people with theoretical, yet impossible, paths to integration. Feminists faced similar barriers to full incorporation due to the gendered contradictions inherent in universalism. The system presumed citizenship to be male and thus positioned women as outsiders. Feminism's Empire connects this critical struggle to hierarchical power shifts in racial and national status that created uneasy linkages between French feminists and imperial authorities.
Femme Vie Liberté by Marjane Satrapi
Call Number: HQ1735.2 .F446 2023
ISBN: 9782378803780
Published/Created: 2023
On September 16, 2022, in Iran, Mahsa Amini succumbed to the blows of the morality police because she had not worn her veil "properly". Her death sparked a wave of protests across the country, which developed into an unprecedented feminist movement. Marjane Satrapi has brought together three specialists: Farid Vahid, political scientist, Jean-Pierre Perrin, reporter, Abbas Milani, historian, and seventeen of the most talented comic artists to tell the story of this major event for Iran, and for all of us.
Féminin : roman by Claire Touzard
ISBN: 9782080265777
Published/Created: 2022
A novel about a female journalist, Frankie, who works for a women's newspaper. It traces her life through ups and downs, as a man is named editor-in-cheif and she struggles to hold onto her feminist values. Touzard asks us to analyze the false narratives that govern our lives even in places that we feel we should be safe.
Féminismes & pop culture by Jennifer Padjemi
ISBN: 9782234090507
Published/Created: 2021
Is feminism worn on a t-shirt? Is Kim Kardashian a sex object or a powerful woman? Can the Grey's Anatomy series change women's lives? French writer and social journalist Jennifer Padjemi questions the interdependent links between mass consumption and progressive ideology, and takes a joyful and lucid look at our entertainment, without concessions to patriarchy. In a documented, passionate and engaged first-person essay, Padjemi explores the alliance, for better or for worse, of feminism and pop culture. By taking up the thread of modern feminist movements, from the emergence of an intersectional feminism to the “body positive” movement via Me too and based on her experience as a black woman, she dissects the relationship we have with objects—popular cultural events, video clips, mainstream songs ,TV series. Our consumption of entertainment shapes, supports, and sometimes challenges our vision of the world. Using pop culture as a mirror of our globalized society, the author questions through it feminism, gender, sexuality and intersectionality.
Francophone Women Writers by Eric Touya de Marenne
Call Number: PQ149 .T68 2011
ISBN: 9780739140307
Published/Created: 2011
This anthology seeks to introduce women writers in the "global" Francophone world by investigating the place of feminist, postcolonial and cross-cultural theories in interpreting women francophone literature. The book also allows the reader to examine the extent to which women writers reflect or negate the conventional archetypes of Francophone literature, how they reinvent the political, cultural and critical discourse of their time and place, and create their own identity from objectification to subjectivity. The ambition of this anthology is to explore these themes at a time when globalization is redefining the concepts of language, identity, space and history, and transforming the rapport of each individual to the "other". While most research on the subject focus on specific countries or regions, this volume offers a new critical introduction to Francophone women authors from a broad geographical range in North and West Africa, the Near East, the Pacific, North America, the Caribbean Islands and Europe. Significantly, this study assembles a broad and representative collection of texts written by women authors that will generate a fruitful and critical reflection among students and scholars. The selected texts present critical issues that students and readers at large need to explore to further their knowledge of francophone literature and culture.
French Cultural Studies for the Twenty-First Century by Masha Belenky (Editor); Kathryn Kleppinger (Editor); Anne O'Neil-Henry (Editor); Annie Brancky (Contribution by); Elizabeth Emery (Contribution by); Michael Garval (Contribution by); Susan Hiner (Contribution by); Leslie Kealhofer-Kemp (Contribution by); Mehammed Mack (Contribution by); Rachel Mesch (Contribution by); Lise Schreier (Contribution by); Chelsea Stieber (Contribution by)
Call Number: DC33 .F7774 2017
ISBN: 9781611496376
Published/Created: 2017
French Cultural Studies for the Twenty-First Century brings together current scholarship on a diverse range of topics--from French postcards and Third Republic menus to Haitian literary magazines and representation of race in vaudeville theater--in order to provide methodological insight into the current practice of French cultural studies. The essays in the volume show how scholars of French studies can effectively analyze what we term "non-traditional sources" in their historical and geographical contexts. In doing so, the volume offers a compelling vision of the field today and maps out potential paradigms for future research. This book builds upon previous scholarship that defined the stakes of using an interdisciplinary approach to analyze cultural objects from France and Francophone regions and aims to evaluate the current state of this complex and constantly evolving field and its current methodological practices.
French Feminisms 1975 and After by Diana Holmes (Editor); Imogen Long (Editor); Margaret Atack (Editor); Alison S. Fell (Editor)
Call Number: PQ149 .F724 2018
ISBN: 9783034322096
Published/Created: 2017
This volume explores contemporary French women's writing through the prism of one of the defining moments of modern feminism: the writings of the 1970s that came to be known as «French feminism». With their exhilarating renewal of the rules of fiction, and a sophisticated theoretical approach to gender, representation and textuality, Hélène Cixous and others became internationally recognised for their work, at a time when the women's movement was also a driving force for social change. Taking its cue from Les Femmes s'entêtent, a multi-authored analysis of the situation of women and a celebration of women's creativity, this collection offers new readings of Monique Wittig, Emma Santos and Hélène Cixous, followed by essays on Nina Bouraoui, Michèle Perrein and Ying Chen, Marguerite Duras and Mireille Best, and Valentine Goby. A contextualising introduction establishes the theoretical and cultural framework of the volume with a critical re-evaluation of this key moment in the history of feminist thought and women's writing, pursuing its various legacies and examining the ways theoretical and empirical developments in queer studies, postcolonial studies and postmodernist philosophies have extended, inflected and challenged feminist work.
Gay and Lesbian Cultures in France by Lucille Cairns (Editor)
Call Number: HQ75.16.F8 G39 2002
ISBN: 3906769666
Published/Created: 2002
This volume of essays originated in but is not restricted to the proceedings of the 'Gay Cultures in France' conference held at the University of Stirling in April 1999. While the focus is clearly on French theory and experience, the first section of the volume transcends national borders, as do many elements of the subsequent chapters. The chapters examine various dimensions of the lives of gay men and women in contemporary France, both as subjects and objects of text (written, cinematic, and graphic), of political discourse, of social formations, and, in the era of AIDS, of medical and health-care institutions. The book is divided into three sections. The first provides theoretical overviews from intellectuals of international distinction: David Halperin and Christopher Robinson. The second section deals with social, political, and health-care issues of major significance to French gay men and women. The third, and longest, section, explores a range of textual inscriptions - from film, literature, theory, and bande dessinée - of lesbian and gay desire and experience.
Gender and sexuality in the European media : exploring different contexts through conceptualisations of age by Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Despina Chronaki, Sara De Vuyst & Sergio Villanueva Baselga.
Call Number: P96.S52 E97 2021
ISBN: 9780367407346
Published/Created: 2021
This book investigates how engagements with media reflect people's constructions and understandings of gender in society, as well as articulations of age in relation to gender and sexuality; the ways in which negotiations of gender and sexuality inform people's practices with media, and not least how mediated representations may reinforce or challenge social hierarchies based in differences of gender, sexual orientation and age. It will offer original empirical and theoretical insights into the complex set of relations which exist between age, gender, sexualities and the media. In doing so, it will showcase new and innovative research at the forefront of media and communication practice and theory. This collection includes contributions from both established and early career scholars across Europe, engaging with a wide range hotly debated topics within the context of gender, sexuality and the media and aiming at informing academic, public and policy agendas
Girl by Camille Laurens; Adriana Hunter (Translator)
Call Number: PQ2672.A78365 F5513 2022
ISBN: 9781635421019
Published/Created: 2022
A novel that examines one girls experience from girlhood to adulthood. From the acclaimed author of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, a deeply personal and insightful account of being a girl, woman, and mother in a world that sees the feminine as less than. Born in 1959 to a middle-class family, Laurence Barraque grows up with her sister in the northern city of Rouen. Her father is a doctor, her mother a housewife. She understands from an early age, by way of language and her parents' example, that a girl's place in life is inferior to a boy's- Asked for the 1964 census whether he has any children, her father promptly responds, "No. I have two daughters." When Laurence eventually becomes a mother herself in the nineties, she grapples with the question of what it means to be a girl, to have a girl, and what lessons she should try to pass down or undo. Masterful in her analysis of the subtle and obvious ways women are undermined by a sexist society, Camille Laurens lays out her experiences of the past forty years in this poignant, powerful book. Girl is at once intimate and sweeping in its depiction of the great challenges we face, such as equalizing the education system and transmitting feminist values to the younger generations.
Hijab and the Republic by Bronwyn Winter
Call Number: GT2112 .W56 2008
ISBN: 9780815631996
Published/Created: 2009
The hijab is arguably the most discussed and controversial item of women's clothing today. It has become the primary global symbol of female Muslim identity for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and is the focus of much debate in the confrontation between Islam and the West. Nowhere has this debate been more acute or complex than in France. In "Hijab and the Republic", Bronwyn Winter provides a riveting account of the controversial 2003 French law to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious signs from public schools. While much has been written on the subject, Winter offers a unique feminist perspective, carefully delineating its political and cultural aspects. To understand the current controversy, the author traces the history of secularism in France and the shift in interpretations of Islam before turning to a review of the more recent past. Drawing on both scholarly literature and popular commentary, she examines the headscarf debate from its inception in 1989 through fluctuations in its intensity in public consciousness over the 1990s to its surging significance in the wake of 9/11 and the consequent shift in global politics. Winter argues convincingly that the issue must be understood within the specific historical and cultural context of France and through a feminist lens, since gender is fundamental to the debate about veiling Muslim women. "Hijab and the Republic" presents a fresh and richly detailed examination of a subject that remains at the forefront of discussion about Islam and the West.
Horrible Mothers by Loïc Bourdeau (Editor)
Call Number: PQ3902 .H67 2019
ISBN: 9780803293984
Published/Created: 2019
For too long the main narratives of motherhood have been oppressive and exclusionary, frequently ignoring issues of female identity--especially regarding those not conforming to traditional female stereotypes. Horrible Mothers offers a variety of perspectives for analyzing representations of the mother in francophone literature and film at the turn of the twenty-first century in North America, including Québec, Ontario, New England, and California. Contributors reexamine the "horrible mother" paradigm within a broad range of sociocultural contexts from different locations to broaden the understanding of mothering beyond traditional ideology. The selections draw from long-established scholarship in women's studies as well as from new developments in queer studies to make sense of and articulate strategies of representation; to show how contemporary family models are constantly evolving, reshaping, and moving away from heteronormative expectations; and to reposition mothers as subjects occupying the center of their own narrative, rather than as objects. The contributors engage narratives of mothering from myriad perspectives, referencing the works of writers or filmmakers such as Marguerite Andersen, Nelly Arcan, Grégoire Chabot, Xavier Dolan, Nancy Huston, and Lucie Joubert.
Hélène Cixous by Verena Andermatt Conley
Call Number: PQ2663.I9 Z6 1991
ISBN: 0803263457
Published/Created: 1991
Born in Algeria in 1937, Hélène Cixous achieved world fame for her short stories, criticism, and fictionalized autobiography (Dedans, 1969). Her work quickly became controversial because it frankly tested a distinction between male and female writing. Her literary experiments and her conclusions make her one of the most stimulating and most elusive feminist theorists of our time. Verena Andermatt Conley, a professor of French and women's studies at Miami University, has written the first full-length study of Cixous in English. Looking at Cixous as writer, teacher, and theoretician, Conley takes up Cixous's ongoing exploration of the "feminine" as related to the "masculine"--words not to be equated with "woman" and "man"--and her search for a terminology less freighted with emotion and prejudgment. Conley has updated this paperback edition with a new preface, bibliography, and interview with Cixous conducted by the editors of Hors Cadre.
I Hate Men by Pauline Harmange; Natasha Lehrer (Translator)
Call Number: HQ1155 .H373513 2020
ISBN: 9780008457587
Published/Created: 2020
The feminist book they tried to ban in France. 'A delightful book' says Roxane Gay. Women, especially feminists and lesbians, have long been accused of hating men. Our instinct is to deny it at all costs. (After all, women have been burnt at the stake for admitting to less.) But what if mistrusting men, disliking men - and yes, maybe even hating men - is, in fact, a useful response to sexism? What if such a response offers a way out of oppression, a means of resistance? What if it even offers a path to joy, solidarity and sisterhood? In this sparkling essay, as mischievous and provocative as it is urgent and serious, Pauline Harmange interrogates modern attitudes to feminism and makes a rallying cry for women to find a greater love for each other - and themselves. [Moi les hommes, je les déteste]
In Defense of Witches by Mona Chollet; Sophie R. Lewis (Translator)
Call Number: HQ1122 .C54713 2022
ISBN: 9781250271419
Published/Created: 2022
Mona Chollet's In Defense of Witches is a "brilliant, well-documented" celebration (Le Monde) by an acclaimed French feminist of the witch as a symbol of female rebellion and independence in the face of misogyny and persecution. Centuries after the infamous witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, witches continue to hold a unique fascination for many: as fairy tale villains, practitioners of pagan religion, as well as feminist icons. Witches are both the ultimate victim and the stubborn, elusive rebel. But who were the women who were accused and often killed for witchcraft? What types of women have centuries of terror censored, eliminated, and repressed? Celebrated feminist writer Mona Chollet explores three types of women who were accused of witchcraft and persecuted: the independent woman, since widows and celibates were particularly targeted; the childless woman, since the time of the hunts marked the end of tolerance for those who claimed to control their fertility; and the elderly woman, who has always been an object of at best, pity, and at worst, horror. Examining modern society, Chollet concludes that these women continue to be harrassed and oppressed. Rather than being a brief moment in history, the persecution of witches is an example of society's seemingly eternal misogyny, while women today are direct heirs to those who were hunted down and killed for their thoughts and actions. With fiery prose and arguments that range from the scholarly to the cultural, In Defense of Witches seeks to unite the mythic image of the witch with modern women who seek to live their lives on their own terms. See also her recent publication, Réinventer l'amour: Comment le patriarcat sabote les relations hétérosexuelle.
King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes ; translated by Frank Wynne.
Call Number: PQ2664.E7895 Z4613 2010b
ISBN: 9781913097349
Published/Created: 2010
La France, tu l'aimes ou tu la fermes? by Rokhaya Diallo
Call Number: HN425.5 .D525 2019
ISBN: 9782845977839
Published/Created: 2019
"Figure majeure du féminisme et de l'antiracisme, Rokhaya Diallo livre ici un concentré de ses combats en 55 tribunes. En une décennie, elle est devenue une voix incontournable de la lutte contre les oppressions en France et dans le monde. Engagée contre le racisme et contre le sexisme, actrice de la vie culturelle, elle interroge la société française et, depuis sa position singulière, la confronte à ses impensés. Féminisme noir ou musulman, islamophobie et détournement de la laïcité, fragilité blanche, identité française et injonction à l'assimilation, racisme d'État et harcèlement policier, mémoire coloniale, cultures populaires, cinéma et séries étasuniennes... Si les analyses de Rokhaya Diallo touchent avec autant de puissance ses lectrices et ses lecteurs, c'est qu'elle parvient à lier le politique et l'intime, le corps et l'État, le détricotage des oppressions et l'accompagnement des émancipations."--Page 4 of cover.
"Figure majeure du féminisme et de l'antiracisme, Rokhaya Diallo livre ici un concentré de ses combats en 55 tribunes. En une décennie, elle est devenue une voix incontournable de la lutte contre les oppressions en France et dans le monde. Engagée contre le racisme et contre le sexisme, actrice de la vie culturelle, elle interroge la société française et, depuis sa position singulière, la confronte à ses impensés. Féminisme noir ou musulman, islamophobie et détournement de la laïcité, fragilité blanche, identité française et injonction à l'assimilation, racisme d'État et harcèlement policier, mémoire coloniale, cultures populaires, cinéma et séries étasuniennes... Si les analyses de Rokhaya Diallo touchent avec autant de puissance ses lectrices et ses lecteurs, c'est qu'elle parvient à lier le politique et l'intime, le corps et l'État, le détricotage des oppressions et l'accompagnement des émancipations."--Page 4 of cover.
The Law of Kinship: anthropology, psychoanalysis, and the family in France by Camille Robcis
Call Number: HQ624 .R63 2013
ISBN: 9780801451294
Published/Created: 2013
In France as elsewhere in recent years, legislative debates over single-parent households, same-sex unions, new reproductive technologies, transsexuality, and other challenges to long-held assumptions about the structure of family and kinship relations have been deeply divisive. What strikes many as uniquely French, however, is the extent to which many of these discussions?whether in legislative chambers, courtrooms, or the mass media?have been conducted in the frequently abstract vocabularies of anthropology and psychoanalysis. In this highly original book, Camille Robcis seeks to explain why and how academic discourses on kinship have intersected and overlapped with political debates on the family-and on the nature of French republicanism itself. She focuses on the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jacques Lacan, both of whom highlighted the interdependence of the sexual and the social by positing a direct correlation between kinship and socialization. Robcis traces how their ideas gained recognition not only from French social scientists but also from legislators and politicians who relied on some of the most obscure and difficult concepts of structuralism to enact a series of laws concerning the family. Lévi-Strauss and Lacan constructed the heterosexual family as a universal trope for social and psychic integration, and this understanding of the family at the root of intersubjectivity coincided with the role that the family has played in modern French law and public policy. The Law of Kinship contributes to larger conversations about the particularities of French political culture, the nature of sexual difference, and the problem of reading and interpretation in intellectual history.
Le néo-féminisme contre la famille by Jean Gabard
ISBN: 9782846213363
Published/Created: 2023
Jean Gabard was a teacher. He defends dignity and equality and therefore feminism. He has written numerous essays and articles on the relationships between men and women, gender equality, the fight against sexist sterotypes, harassment and violence against women. He discusses what he calls neo-feminism as an ideology that has become sexist in itself and in its effort to create a "new man". [Neo-feminism Against the Family]
Middlebrow Matters by Diana Holmes
ISBN: 1786941562
Published/Created: 2019
This is the first book to study the middlebrow novel in France. Middlebrow is a derogatory word that connotes blandness, mediocrity and a failed aspiration to 'high' culture. However, when appropriated as a positive term to denote that wide swathe of literature between the challenging experimentalism of the high and the formulaic drive of the popular, it enables a rethinking of the literary canon from the point of view of what most readers actually read, a criterion curiously absent from dominant definitions of literary value. Since women have long formed a majority of the nation's reading public, this perspective immediately feminises what has always been a very male canon. Opening with a theorisation of the concept of middlebrow that mounts a defence of some literary qualities disdained by modernism, the book then focuses on a series of case studies of periods (the Belle Époque, inter-war, early twenty-first century), authors (including Colette, Irène Nemirovsky, Françoise Sagan, Anna Gavalda) and the middlebrow nature of literary prizes. It concludes with a double reading of a single text, from the perspective of an academic critic, and from that of a middlebrow reader.
Mother Love by Elizabeth Badinter
Call Number: HQ759 .B2213
ISBN: 0025046101
Published/Created: 1981
The New Parisienne by Lindsey Tramuta; Joann Pai (photographer)
ISBN: 9781419742811
Published/Created: 2020
In a follow-up to the popular The New Paris, Lindsey Tramuta explores the impact that the women of Paris have had on the rapidly evolving culture of their city. The New Parisienne focuses on one of the city's most prominent features, its women. Lifting the veil on the mythologized Parisian woman—white, lithe, ever fashionable—Lindsey Tramuta demystifies this oversimplified archetype and recasts the women of Paris as they truly are, in all their complexity. Featuring 50 activists like Lauren Bastide (journalist and podcaster), Elisa Rojas (lawyer and disability-rights activist), Rokhaya Diallo (journalist, filmmaker and antiracist activist), Rebecca Amsellem (author and creator of Les Glorieuses), Clémence Zamora Cruz (Inter-LGBT spokesperson and trans activist); creators like Aline Asmar d'Amman, Elena Rossini, Inna Modja, Amélie Viaene, Ajiri Aki, Victoire de Taillac, educators, visionaries, and disruptors—like Leïla Slimani and Mayor Anne Hidalgo—the book reveals Paris as a blossoming cultural center of feminine power. Both the featured women and Tramuta herself offer up favorite destinations and women-owned businesses, including beloved shops, artistic venues, bistros, and more. Tramuta also host a podcast called The New Paris. The New Parisienne showcases "Parisianness" in all its multiplicity, highlighting those who are bucking tradition, making names for themselves, and transforming the city. For French edition do an author search. [La nouvelle Parisienne: les femmes et les idées qui font Paris avec Rebecca Amsellem, Lauren Bastide, Rokhaya Diallo, Dr. Ghada Hatem-Gantzer, Anne Hidalgo, Delphine Horvilleur, Elisa Rojas and Leïla Slimani...]
Née en France : histoire d'une jeune beur by Aïcha Benaïssa, Sophie Ponchelet
Call Number: MLCS 90/16945 (D)
ISBN: 2228882755
Published/Created: 1991
Portraits in Lace by Marie Darrieussecq; Charles éger
Call Number: TR681.W6 F74 2015
ISBN: 9780500517994
Published/Created: 2015
Spare portraits of the Breton women of northwestern France in beautiful traditional dress. From high starched towers to elaborately pinned, tucked, and embroidered confections of handmade lace, the creations captured here by Charles Fréger are as delicate as they are distinctive. Fréger has photographed a series of portraits of Breton women of every generation from every region, wearing costumes and headdresses of endless variety. Each costume and headdress may indicate a wearer's village as well as age or status. They are worn for celebrations of marriage, birth, or a local saint's day, or to mark a period of mourning. Against a translucent gauze backdrop, young girls and women, both married and unmarried, mothers, sisters, and grandmothers, pose in costume for these stunning portraits. Although these headdresses were once worn daily, today they are part of a costume tradition upheld by women throughout Brittany in rites of passage, in Celtic circles, and at summer festivals, keenly attended by young and old. Some fifty headdresses are identified and described in a separate reference section, accompanied by specially commissioned illustrations. Fréger's exceptional photographs demonstrate Breton culture's wealth of pride, ingenuity, and personal expression.
Postcolonial Representations by Françoise Lionnet; Françoise Lionnet
Call Number: PN471 .L57 1995
ISBN: 0801429846
Published/Created: 2013-05-09
Passionate allegiances to competing theoretical camps have stifled dialogue among today's literary critics, asserts Françoise Lionnet. Discussing a number of postcolonial narratives by women from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, she offers a comparative feminist approach that can provide common ground for debates on such issues as multiculturalism, universalism, and relativism. Lionnet uses the concept of métissage, or cultural mixing, in her readings of a rich array of Francophone and Anglophone texts?by Michelle Cliff from Jamaica, Suzanne Dracius-Pinalie from Martinique, Ananda Devi from Mauritius, Maryse Conde and Myriam Warner-Vieyra from Guadeloupe, Gayl Jones from the United States, Bessie Head from Botswana, Nawal El Saadawi from Egypt, and Leila Sebbar from Algeria and France. Focusing on themes of exile and displacement and on narrative treatments of culturally sanctioned excision, polygamy, and murder, Lionnet examines the psychological and social mechanisms that allow individuals to negotiate conflicting cultural influences. In her view, these writers reject the opposition between self and other and base their self-portrayals on a métissage of forms and influences. Lionnet's perspective has much to offer critics and theorists, whether they are interested in First or Third World contexts, American or French critical perspectives, essentialist or poststructuralist epistemologies.
Rethinking the French Classroom by E. Nicole Meyer (Editor); Joyce Johnston (Editor)
Call Number: PQ149 .R48 2019
ISBN: 9781138369931
Published/Created: 2018
This volume investigates how teaching practices can address the changing status of literature in the French classroom. Focusing on how women writing in French are changing the face of French Studies, opening the canon to not only new approaches to gender but to genre, expanding interdisciplinary studies and aiding scholars to rethink the teaching of literature, each chapter provides concrete strategies useful to a wide variety of classrooms and institutional contexts. Essays address how to bring French Studies and women's and gender studies into the twenty-first century through intersections of autobiography, gender issues and technology; ways to introduce beginning and intermediate students to the rich diversity of women writing in French; strategies for teaching postcolonial writing and literary theory; and interdisciplinary approaches to expand our student audiences in the United States, Canada, or abroad. In short, revisiting how we teach, why we teach, and what we teach through the prism of women's texts and lives while raising issues that affect cisgender women of the Hexagon, queer and other-gendered women, immigrants and residents of the postcolony attracts more openly diverse students. Whether new to the profession or seasoned educators, faculty will find new ideas to invigorate and diversify their pedagogical approaches.
Revaluing French Feminism by Nancy Fraser (Editor); Sandra Lee Bartky (Editor)
Call Number: HQ1190 .R48 1992
ISBN: 9780253206824
Published/Created: 1992
Fraser and Bartky have brought the encounter between U.S. and French feminism to a new level of seriousness. In the last decade, elements of French feminist discourse have permeated and transformed the larger feminist culture in the United States. This volume is the first sustained attempt to revalue French feminism and answer the question: What has been gained and what has been lost as a result of this intercultural encounter? Interviews with Simone de Beauvoir open the book; essays by French feminists Sarah Kofman and Luce Irigaray follow; the North American contributors are Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, Diana J. Fuss, Nancy J. Holland, Eleanor H. Kuykendall, Dorothy Leland, Diana T. Meyers, Andrea Nye, and Margaret A. Simons.
Screening Integration by Sylvie Durmelat (Editor, Introduction by); Vinay Swamy (Editor, Introduction by)
Call Number: PN1995.9.N66 S38 2011
ISBN: 9780803228252
Published/Created: 2012
North African immigrants, once confined to France's social and cultural margins, have become a strong presence in France's national life. Similarly, descendants of immigrants from Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia have gained mainstream recognition as filmmakers and as the subject of films. The first collective volume on this topic, Screening Integration offers a sustained critical analysis of this cinema. In particular, contributors evaluate how Maghrebi films have come to participate in, promote, and, at the same time, critique France's integration. In the process, these essays reflect on the conditions that allowed for the burgeoning of this cinema in the first place, as well as on the social changes the films delineate. Screening Integration brings together established scholars in the fields of postcolonial, Francophone, and film studies to address the latest developments in this cinematic production. These authors explore the emergence of various genres that recast the sometimes fossilized idea of ethnic difference. Screening Integration provides a much-needed reference for those interested in comprehending the complex shifts in twenty-first-century French cinema and in the multicultural social formations that have become an integral part of contemporary France in the new millennium.
Sex and Lies by Leïla Slimani; Sophie Lewis (Translator)
Call Number: HQ18.M8 S5513 2020
ISBN: 9780143133766
Published/Created: 2020
"Jaw-dropping . . . Inspiring . . . A haunting and beautifully composed book . . . It blew my mind." --Lisa Taddeo, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Women A fearless exposé of the secrets and lies of women's intimate lives, by the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny, Adèle, and In the Country of Others "All those in positions of authority--politicians, parents, teachers--maintain the same line: 'Do what you like, but do it in private.' " Leila Slimani was in her native Morocco promoting her novel Adèle, about a woman addicted to sex, when she began meeting women who confided the dark secrets of their sexual lives. In Morocco, adultery, abortion, homosexuality, prostitution, and sex outside of marriage are all punishable by law, and women have only two choices: They can be wives or virgins. Sex and Lies combines vivid, often harrowing testimonies with Slimani's passionate and intelligent commentary to make a galvanizing case for a sexual revolution in the Arab world.
The Straight Mind by Monique Wittig
Call Number: HQ1190 .W58 1992
ISBN: 0807079162
Published/Created: 1992
These political, philosophical, and literary essays mark the first collection of theoretical writing from the acclaimed novelist and French feminist writer Monique Wittig. Wittig published her first novel, L'Opoponax in 1964. She won critical acclaim for her writing and became one of the founders of the Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF) or Women's Liberation Movement. She also wrote, Le Corps lesbien (The Lesbian Body) and Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes (Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary) with her partner Sande Zeig. She died in 2003.
A Sun to Be Sewn by Jean D'Amérique; Thierry Kehou (Translator)
Call Number: PQ3949.3.A46
ISBN: 9781635422832
Published/Created: 2023
In this modern fable full of poetry, desire, and blood, a creative young Haitian girl struggles against seemingly impossible odds to escape the cruel reality of her Port-au-Prince slum. "You'll be alone in the great night." That's what Papa has always prophesied to her. Papa, who isn't her real father--he disappeared when she was born. Since then, her mother has been forced to walk the streets to provide for herself and her daughter, while Papa robs and murders for the local gang leader, to ensure his access to ganja and alcohol, but also for the sheer pleasure of it. Often finding herself alone within the four walls of a hovel in a Haitian shantytown with corrugated iron for a roof, the young girl tirelessly tries to compose a letter that will capture what is in her heart and soul. She is consumed with love for a classmate, the daughter of her teacher, and searches for words to faithfully express her feelings and her dreams. In a poetic language that encompasses poverty and idealism, she observes the violence, the shortcomings, and the addictions of the adults around her. Her passion makes her resilient, nurturing her character and helping her to invent a better fate than the one to which she seemed doomed. [Soleil à coudre]
Taking French Feminism to the Streets by Brittany Murray (Editor, Translator); Diane Perpich (Editor, Translator)
Call Number: HQ1613 .T35 2011
ISBN: 9780252035487
Published/Created: 2011
In 2003, Fadela Amara founded Ni Putes Ni Soumises (NPNS), a French feminist social movement that arose in the banlieues, or impoverished suburbs of Paris. Growing up in the banlieues as a child of Algerian immigrants, Amara became a fierce advocate for the underclass and was later appointed to a post in the French government headed by Nicolas Sarkozy. Led by Amara and devoted to equal rights and opportunities for everyone, NPNS is especially focused on improving conditions for Muslim immigrant women who often suffer from discrimination, violence, and repression. Providing ample context and explanation of the NPNS movement for the first time for English-language readers, editors and translators Brittany Murray and Diane Perpich include unpublished materials from the movement's formative days when women spoke out about the difficulties and violence faced daily in France's ghettos. A discussion with the movement's founder provides additional information about immigration, discrimination, feminism, the headscarf affair, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Taking French Feminism to the Streets provides a penetrating analysis of the social, political, and economic conditions in France.
Transnational Africana Women's Fictions by Cheryl Sterling
ISBN: 9781032011288
Published/Created: 2021
"This book explores the works of women writers and filmmakers across the African and African Diaspora world, reflecting on how the transnational sphere can serve to highlight voices that were at the margins of gender and race hierarchies. The book demonstrates how in discourse and theory Africana women are the centers of their own knowledge production and agency, as the artists and their characters point the way forward. Their multiperspectivism leads to avenues of selective mutuality and influence, to generate transformative creative work, scholarship, and practices. Writers included are Sylvia Wynter, Edwidge Danticat, Werewere Liking, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Sefi Atta, NoViolet Bulawayo, Nnedi Okorafor, Ama Ata Aidoo, Igiaba Scego, Leonara Miano, Gisèle Hountondji, Monique Ilboudo, and Maryse Condé, as well as the filmmaker, Kemi Adetiba.Over the course of the book, the contributors critically explore and update the canon on women in the African and African Diaspora Literary sphere, highlighting their contributions to theoretical debates, and providing substantive nuance to diasporic subjectivity. This book will be of interest to scholars of African and Africana Studies, comparative literature and women and gender studies"--
Unbecoming Language by Annabel L. Kim
Call Number: PQ673 .K53 2018
ISBN: 9780814213841
Published/Created: 2018
In Unbecoming Language, Annabel L. Kim examines a corpus of French writing against difference. Inaugurated by Nathalie Sarraute and sustained in the work of Monique Wittig and Anne Garréta, this corpus highlights three generations of the twentieth and recent twenty-first centuries and the direct chain of influence between them. Kim considers these writers, and the story of literature's political potential, as a way of rereading and reinterpreting each writer's individual corpus--rearticulating the strain of anti-difference feminist thought that has been largely forgotten in our (Anglo-American) histories of French feminisms. Kim's close readings ultimately enliven the current conversation in French studies by serving as a provocation to return to reading literary texts deeply and closely, without subordinating literature to a pre-existing ideological framework--to let literature speak, to let it theorize. Tracking the influence of these writers on each other, Kim provides a new, original French feminist poetics and demonstrates that Sarraute, Wittig, and Garréta's work allows for a hollowing out of difference from within, allowing writers and readers to unbecome--to break free of identity and exist as subjectivities without subjecthood. In looking at these writers together, Kim provides a defense of literature as liberatory-- capable of effecting personal and political change--and gives readers an experience of literature's revolutionary possibilities.
Undesirable by Jennifer Anne Boittin
Call Number: HQ1613 .B63 2022
ISBN: 9780226822235
Published/Created: 2022-11-16
Archival research into policing and surveillance of migrant women illuminates pressing contemporary issues. Examining little-known policing archives in France, Senegal, and Cambodia, Jennifer Anne Boittin unearths the stories of hundreds of women labeled "undesirable" by the French colonial police and society in the early twentieth century. These "undesirables" were often women traveling alone, women who were poor or ill, women of color, or women whose intimate lives were deemed unruly. To refute the label and be able to move freely, they spoke out or wrote impassioned letters: some emphasized their "undesirable" qualities to suggest that they needed the care and protection of the state to support their movements, while others used the empire's own laws around Frenchness and mobility to challenge state or societal interference. Tacking between advocacy and supplication, these women summoned intimate details to move beyond, contest, or confound surveillance efforts, bringing to life a practice that Boittin terms "passionate mobility." In considering how ordinary women pursued autonomy, security, companionship, or simply a better existence in the face of surveillance and control, Undesirable illuminates pressing contemporary issues of migration and violence.
Unveiling the Nation by Emily Laxer
Call Number: BL2765.F8 L39 2019
ISBN: 9780773556287
Published/Created: 2019
Over the last few decades, politicians in Europe and North America have fiercely debated the effects of a growing Muslim minority on their respective national identities. Some of these countries have prohibited Islamic religious coverings in public spaces and institutions, while in others, legal restriction remains subject to intense political conflict. Seeking to understand these different outcomes, social scientists have focused on the role of countries' historically rooted models of nationhood and their attendant discourses of secularism. Emily Laxer's Unveiling the Nation problematizes this approach. Using France and Quebec as illustrative cases, she traces how the struggle of political parties for power and legitimacy shapes states' responses to Islamic signs. Drawing on historical evidence and behind-the-scenes interviews with politicians and activists, Laxer uncovers unseen links between structures of partisan conflict and the strategies that political actors employ when articulating the secular boundaries of the nation. In France's historically class-based political system, she demonstrates, parties on the left and the right have converged around a restrictive secular agenda in order to limit the siphoning of votes by the ultra-right. In Quebec, by contrast, the longstanding electoral salience of the "national question" has encouraged political actors to project highly conflicting images of the province's secular past, present, and future. At a moment of heightened debate in the global politics of religious diversity, Laxer's Unveiling the Nation sheds critical light on the way party politics and its related instabilities shape the secular boundaries of nationhood in diverse societies.
Voices and Veils by Anna Kemp
Call Number: PQ149 .K46 2010
ISBN: 9781906540265
Published/Created: 2009
In recent years, the figure of the Muslim Woman has loomed large over mainstream feminist debate in France. Cast alternately as a Frenchwoman-in-the-making or a veiled threat, the Muslim Woman has become emblematic of France's relationship to those identified as its cultural others. But throughout these debates, and in spite of their scale and passion, one view has been glaringly absent: the view of French Muslim women themselves.Drawing on sociological, polemical and literary writings, this thoughtful and wide-ranging study examines the unacknowledged colonial roots of French feminist discourses on Islam and femininity, before bringing to light examples of French Muslim women's writing and activism that suggest alternative ways of being both French and a feminist.Shortlisted for the 2012 Gapper Prize, awarded annually by the Society for French Studies for the best book of its year by a scholar working in French studies in Britain or Ireland.
Vénus Noire by Robin Mitchell
Call Number: DC34.5.A37 M58 2020
ISBN: 9780820354323
Published/Created: 2020
Even though there were relatively few people of color in postrevolutionary France, images of and discussions about black women in particular appeared repeatedly in a variety of French cultural sectors and social milieus. In Vénus Noire, Robin Mitchell shows how these literary and visual depictions of black women helped to shape the country's postrevolutionary national identity, particularly in response to the trauma of the French defeat in the Haitian Revolution. Vénus Noire explores the ramifications of this defeat in examining visual and literary representations of three black women who achieved fame in the years that followed. Sarah Baartmann, popularly known as the Hottentot Venus, represented distorted memories of Haiti in the French imagination, and Mitchell shows how her display, treatment, and representation embodied residual anger harbored by the French. Ourika, a young Senegalese girl brought to live in France by the Maréchal Prince de Beauvau, inspired plays, poems, and clothing and jewelry fads, and Mitchell examines how the French appropriated black female identity through these representations while at the same time perpetuating stereotypes of the hypersexual black woman. Finally, Mitchell shows how demonization of Jeanne Duval, longtime lover of the poet Charles Baudelaire, expressed France's need to rid itself of black bodies even as images and discourses about these bodies proliferated. The stories of these women, carefully contextualized by Mitchell and put into dialogue with one another, reveal a blind spot about race in French national identity that persists in the postcolonial present.
We Are Not Born Submissive by Manon Garcia
Call Number: HQ1208 .G2713
ISBN: 9780691201825
Published/Created: 2021
A philosophical exploration of female submission, using insights from feminist thinkers--especially Simone de Beauvoir--to reveal the complexities of women's reality and lived experience. What role do women play in the perpetuation of patriarchy? On the one hand, popular media urges women to be independent, outspoken, and career-minded. Yet, this same media glorifies a specific, sometimes voluntary, female submissiveness as a source of satisfaction. In philosophy, even less has been said on why women submit to men and the discussion has been equally contradictory--submission has traditionally been considered a vice or pathology, but female submission has been valorized as innate to women's nature. Is there a way to explore female submission in all of its complexity--not denying its appeal in certain instances, and not buying into an antifeminist, sexist, or misogynistic perspective? We Are Not Born Submissive offers the first in-depth philosophical exploration of female submission, focusing on the thinking of Simone de Beauvoir, and more recent work in feminist philosophy, epistemology, and political theory. Manon Garcia argues that to comprehend female submission, we must invert how we examine power and see it from the woman's point of view. Historically, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and even some radical feminists have conflated femininity and submission. Garcia demonstrates that only through the lens of women's lived experiences--their economic, social, and political situations--and how women adapt their preferences to maintain their own well-being, can we understand the ways in which gender hierarchies in society shape women's experiences. Ultimately, she asserts that women do not actively choose submission. Rather, they consent to--and sometimes take pleasure in--what is prescribed to them through social norms within a patriarchy. Moving beyond the simplistic binary of natural destiny or moral vice, We Are Not Born Submissive takes a sophisticated look at how female submissiveness can be explained. [On ne naît pas soumise, on le devient]
Women's Writing in Contemporary France by Gill Rye (Editor); Michael Worton (Editor)
Call Number: PQ149 .W645 2002
ISBN: 0719062276
Published/Created: 2003
The 1990s witnessed an explosion in women's writing in France, with a particularly exciting new generation of writer's coming to the fore, such as Christine Angot, Marie Darrieussecq and Regine Detambel. Other authors such as Paule Constant, Sylvie Germain, Marie Redonnet and Leila Sebbar, who had begun publishing in the 1980s, claimed their mainstream status in the 1990s with new texts. The book provides an up-to-date introduction to an analysis of new women's writing in contemporary France, including both new writers of the 1990s and their more established counter-parts. The editors' incisive introduction situates these authors and their texts at the centre of the current trends and issues concerning French literary production today, whilst fifteen original essays focus on individual writers. The volume includes specialist bibliographies on each writer, incorporating English translations, major interviews, and key critical studies. Quotations are given in both French and English throughout. An invaluable study resource, this book is written in a clear and accessible style and will be of interest to the general reader as well as to students of all levels, to teachers of a wide range of courses on French culture, and to specialist researchers of French and Francophone literature.
Women, Feminism, and Femininity in the 21st Century by Béatrice Mousli (Editor); Eve-Alice Roustang-Stoller (Editor)
Call Number: HQ1421 .W6529 2009
ISBN: 0230613268
Published/Created: 2009
American women look at French women as having it all: sex, motherhood, work, and public office, while French women look at American women as puritanical, excessively feminist, and unable to "have it all" without guilt. The essays in this book by leading American and French academics and critics set the record straight by assessing the truth of each outlook. They conclude that facts are different from imagination, and that on many issues, French feminists could actually look to the U.S. for inspiration. This book offers the first comparative critical appraisal of how women live in the US and in France and suggests paths of reflection on what women can do to improve their lives in the twenty-first century. This is a must read for anyone interested in the nature of womanhood today in the Western World.
Women Fight, Women Write by Mildred Mortimer
Call Number: PQ3988.5.A5 M595 2018
ISBN: 9780813942049
Published/Created: 2018
Today, the "fight to write"--the struggle to become the legitimate chronicler of one's own story--is being waged and won by women across mediums and borders. But such battles of authorship extend well beyond a single cultural moment. In her gripping study of unsung female narratives of the Algerian War, Mildred Mortimer excavates and explores the role of women's individual and collective memory in recording events of the violent anticolonial conflict. Presenting close readings of published works spanning five decades--from Assia Djebar's 1962 Children of the New World to Zohra Drif's 2014 Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter-- Women Fight, Women Write traces stylistic and material transformations in Algerian women's writings as it reveals evolving attitudes toward memory, trauma, historical objectivity, and women's political empowerment. Refuting the stale binary of men in battle, women at home, these testimonial texts let women lay claim to the Algerian War story as participants and also as chroniclers through fiction, historical studies, and memoir. Algeria's patriarchal norms long kept women from speaking publicly about private matters, silencing their experiences of the war. Still, the conflict has ceaselessly sparked creative work. The country's dark decade of violent struggle between the Algerian army and Islamist fundamentalists in the 1990s brought the liberation struggle back into focus, inspiring and emboldening many more women to defiantly write. Women Fight, Women Write advances the broken silence, illuminating its vital historical revisions and literary innovations.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

"La tristesse est un mur entre deux jardins" : Algérie, France, féminisme by Michelle Perrot, Wassyla Tamzali
Call Number: https://lccn.loc.gov/2021408716
ISBN: 9782738156938
Published/Created: 2021
40 ans de slogans féministes : 1970-2010 by Corinne App
Call Number: HQ1613 .A18 2011
ISBN: 9791090062023
Published/Created: 2011
This book gathers over 600 slogans tracing the evolution and creativity of the French feminist movement from 1970 until 2010. Chanted during demonstrations, these slogans illustrate the militant culture of the Women's Liberation Movement, their inventiveness and the mix of traditions and progressive thought. Hundreds of photos punctuate the texts and help fill in the story of these determined activists who took to the streets to claim their rights and freedom.
Afrofem by Mwasi, collectif afroféministe
Call Number: HQ1617 .M93 2018
ISBN: 9782849506974
Published/Created: 2018
Préface : la nécessité d'un afroféminisme du quotidien -- Nous sommes le rêve le plus féroce de nos ancêtres -- Négrophobie partout, justice nulle part -- De la lutte des classes : qui fait le ménage à la fête de l'Huma? -- Qui nous protège de la police? -- Queer sans strass ni paillettes -- S'aimer politiquement entre femmes noires et hommes noirs -- Internationalisme : nous sommes African-es -- La flamboyance -- 1976, l'affirmation d'un féminisme noir en France -- Les membres de Mwasi depuis sa création.
Au non des femmes : libérer nos classiques du regard masculin by Jennifer Tamas
ISBN: 9782021514292
Published/Created: 2023
Examines and redefines the classic canon of French literature which needs to be expanded in her opinion and removed from "the male gaze".
Bas les voiles! by Chahdortt Djavann
Call Number: GT1420 .D62 2003
ISBN: 2070735346
Published/Created: 2003
But what is it to wear the veil, to inhabit a veiled body? What does it mean to be condemned to confinement in a body that is veiled since it is feminine? Why are girls veiled, only girls? Why do we hide their bodies, their hair? Who has the right to talk about it? I have worn the veil for ten years. It was veil or die. I know what I mean.-Back Cover
Beauté fatale : les nouveaux visages d'une aliénation féminine by Mona Chollet
Call Number: HQ1208 .C48 2012
ISBN: 9782355220395
Published/Created: 2012
Mona Chollet is a Swiss essayist and journalist at Le Monde Diplomatique. Her work focuses on women’s condition, feminism, media and contemporary imaginary. She has notably written Beauté Fatale : les nouveaux visages d’une aliénation féminine (2012), Chez soi : une odyssée de l’espace domestique (2015), and Sorcières: La puissance invaincue des femmes (2018).
Brazen by Pénélope Bagieu (Illustrator); Pénélope Bagieu (Illustrator)
Call Number: PN6747.B34 C8513 2018
ISBN: 9781626728691
Published/Created: 2018
Throughout history and across the globe, one characteristic connects the daring women of Brazen: their indomitable spirit. With her characteristic wit and dazzling drawings, celebrated graphic novelist Pénélope Bagieu profiles the lives of these feisty female role models, some world famous, some little known. From Nellie Bly to Mae Jemison or Josephine Baker to Naziq al-Abid, the stories in this comic biography are sure to inspire the next generation of rebel ladies. This title has Common Core connections. 2019 Eisner Award Winner for Best U.S. Edition of International Material. [Culottées]
Chroniques sur le féminisme noir by Djamila Ribeiro
ISBN: 9782490297030
Published/Created: 2019
This is a translation from Portuguese. Djamila Taís Ribeiro dos Santos is a Brazilian Black feminist philosopher and journalist. She graduated in political philosophy from the Federal University of São Paulo, where she also earned a master's degree on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler.
Derrière le niqab : 10 ans d'enquête sur les femmes qui ont porté et enlevé le voile intégral by Agnès de Féo ; préface d'Olivier Roy
Published/Created: 2020
Sociologist Agnès De Féo uses her ten years of investigation into niqab users in France to enable us to discover their underlying motivations, far from the reductive clichés their detractors cite. Some have become radicalized by joining Syria or Iraq, while others have abandoned the niqab and the practice of Islam. This book, prefaced by Olivier Roy, a political scientist specializing in Islam, transcends appearances and offers us a plunge into the unsuspected intimacy of those who made the Republic tremble.
Douce France, où est (passé) ton bon sens? : lettre ouverte à un pays déboussolé by Sonia Mabrouk
Call Number: HN425.5 .M325 2019
ISBN: 9782259276825
Published/Created: 2019
Born in Tunisia, of French nationality, Sonia Mabrouk was a university professor before becoming a journalist. She has controversial views despite calling herself a liberal. She graduated of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Tunis and of the Sorbonne University in Paris, she taugh for 5 years postgraduate classes in the fields of management and international trade. In this book, "Sweet France, where is your common sense? (gone)" she recounts a dialog between a grandmother and grandchild. "I need to talk to you, Sonia." It all started with a simple phone call. Since that moment, we have maintained a daily link. Sweet, discreet and caring, Delenda has always taken care of her family without ever complaining. In everyone's eyes, granny is an ordinary grandmother. Ostensibly. And only in appearance. Because for some time, a real volcano has woken up. “All these debates about Islam, women, secularism, identity, terrorism, everything! I want people to talk about it without taboos. From a grandmother to her granddaughter. Delenda wants to understand what is happening in France. It is a personal and universal story that I am going to tell you. A dialogue sometimes moving, serious, sometimes funny but always sincere and without pretense. All the major contemporary questions are apprehended through the experiences of two women. Two generations, from one shore to the other of the Mediterranean. Delenda and I, a grandmother and her granddaughter, are convinced: at the end of the road, despite sorrow and anger, there is always light.
Droits des femmes: le grand recul? À l'épreuve de la crise sanitaire en Europe by Amandine Clavaud
Call Number: HQ1236.5.E85 C53 2022
Published/Created: 2022
La pandémie de Covid-19 : un amplificateur des violences conjugales et intrafamiliales -- Les violences sexistes et sexuelles : une "pandémie de l'ombre" -- Les mesures mises en place par les États membres de l'Union européenne pour lutter contre les violences sexistes et sexuelles -- La Convention d'Istanbul : un instrument juridique protecteur mais dont la ratification au sein de l'UE se fait attendre -- Les droits et la santé sexuels et reproductifs attaqués -- Les services de planification familiale perturbés -- L'accès à la contraception et le droit à l'avortement entravés : une instrumentalisation de la crise sanitaire de la part de gouvernements conservateurs -- Les mesures mises en place par les gouvernements pour assurer la continuité des services de planification familiale -- Entre professions du care, augmentation du chômage et conséquences sur la santé mentale : les femmes en première ligne -- La surreprésentation des femmes au sein des métiers du care -- Chômage, emploi, télétravail : les femmes paient la facture du Covid-19 -- Charge mentale, fatigue, dépression : le poids du Covid-19 sur la santé mentale des femmes -- Des instances de gestion de crise aux plans de relance sans les femmes -- De la sous-représentation des femmes aux instances de décision à l'invisibilisation de leur expertise dans les médias -- Des plans de relance : mais où est le genre ?
Écrire à l'encre violette : littératures lesbiennes en France de 1900 à nos jours by Aurore Turbiau, Margot Lachkar, Camille Islert, Manon Berthier, Alexandre Antolin
ISBN: 9791031805160
Published/Created: 2022
Femmes d'islam dans la littérature, le cinéma et l'art contemporains by Catherine Perry ; les auteurs, Safoi Babana-Hampton [and nine others]
Call Number: NX652.W6 F47 2019
ISBN: 9782343181059
Published/Created: 2019
Cet ouvrage rassemble des études d'universitaires d'Afrique, d'Australie, d'Europe et des États-Unis portant sur les représentations des femmes d'Islam. Pour les femmes, les enjeux sont la prise de parole, la créativité, le passage à l'acte et la lutte pour construire un monde plus juste à partir d'une remise en question de la domination patriarcale. L'originalité de ce collectif tient à sa dimension véritablement comparatiste dans la mesure où les études portent autant sur des oeuvres cinématographiques, comme celles de Coline Serreau et de Yamina Benguigui, ou littéraires, telles que celles d'Assia Djebar, de Geneviève Chauvel ou d'Aminata Sow Fall, que sur des récits de vie tels que celui de Karima Berger ou des oeuvres artistiques telles que celles de Lalla Essaydi. Elle relève aussi de la diversité des approches sur les plans discursifs et théoriques. Peut-on être musulmane et féministe ? Peut-on concilier libération individuelle et spiritualité ? Les chercheurs composant cette publication n'hésitent pas à traiter des questions d'identité et de transmission, de religion et de militantisme, de parcours individuels et de luttes sociales dont le centre demeure les femmes d'Islam en tant que sujets et sources de pouvoir de transformation. Par son ouverture multidisciplinaire, l'étendue des questions qu'il explore, les nouvelles perspectives féministes qu'il présente et la profondeur de ses analyses, ce livre fera date dans les domaines francophones et les études sur les femmes en Islam.
Fille de France by Elisa Diallo
Call Number: DC34.5.R33 D53 2019
ISBN: 9782081481428
Published/Created: 2019
Histoire de vivre : mémoires d'une féministe by Anne Zelensky-Tristan
Call Number: HQ1617 .Z44 2005
ISBN: 2702135781
Published/Created: 2005
Histoire féminine de la France : de la Révolution à la loi Veil (1789-1975) by Yannick Ripa
Call Number: HQ1613 .R57 2020
ISBN: 9782410011258
Published/Created: 2020
Preface by Michelle Perrot
Je suis né ni fille ni garçon by Dany Salomé
Call Number: RC883 .S35 2011
ISBN: 9782212549430
Published/Created: 2011
Kiffe ta race : explorer les questions raciales sans tabou by Rokhaya Diallo et Grace Ly
Call Number: HT1521 .D447 2021
ISBN: 9782412066409
Published/Created: 2021
King Kong théorie by Virginie Despentes
Call Number: PQ2664.E7895 Z46 2006
ISBN: 9782246686118
Published/Created: 2006
I write from among the ugly, for the ugly, the frigid, les mal baisées, les imbaisables, all those excluded, as well as for the men who don't want to be protective, those who would like to be but don't know how to do it, those who are not ambitious, competitive or well-endowed. Because the ideal of the attractive white woman that we are constantly brandished under our noses, I believe that it does not exist. Powerful, provocative, and personal, King Kong Theory is a candid account of how the author of Baise-Moi and Vernon Subutex came to be Virginie Despentes. Drawing from personal experience, Despentes shatters received ideas about rape and prostitution, and explodes common attitudes about sex and gender. An autobiography, a call for revolt, a manifesto for a new punk feminism, King Kong Theory is Despentes’s most beloved and reviled work.
Manifesto for a new feminism.
L'économie féministe : pourquoi la science économique a besoin du féminisme et vice versa by Hélène Périvier
ISBN: 9782724626759
Published/Created: 2020
Economics was designed by men to serve a society run by men. It is also the least feminized social science: women represent barely a quarter of economists. Hélène Périvier lifts the veil on the apparent neutrality of the concepts of economics and analyzes the discipline, bringing to light the patriarchal model. Périvier is an economist at the French Observatory of Economics Conditions (OFCE/Science Po).
La culture de l'inceste by Iris Brey, Juliet Drouar
ISBN: 9782021502053
Published/Created: 2022
La familia grande by Camille Kouchner
Call Number: HV6570.4.F8 K68 2021
ISBN: 9782021472660
Published/Created: 2021
Camille Kouchner is a French lawyer and university lecturer who has become a voice for victims of incest by raising awareness to the incest in a prominent French family—her own. She accuses her stepfather of sexually abusing her twin brother in his teenage years. The so-called "Big Family" of the title refers symbolically to the left-leaning cultural elite that she claims protects its own to the detriment of those they have exploited and wronged. Despite her fear of repercussions, her bold step has broken a silence on the taboo of discussing incest and has helped many victims feel that they can discuss their painful and negated pasts. The hashtag #MeTooInceste has taken off, and President Emmanuel Macron has personally lauded "the courage of a sister who could no longer keep quiet." He condemned "a silence built by criminals and successive acts of cowardice".
La France, tu l'aimes ou tu la fermes? by Rokhaya Diallo
Call Number: HN425.5 .D525 2019
ISBN: 9782845977839
Published/Created: 2019
"A major figure in feminism and anti-racism, Rokhaya Diallo has become an essential voice in the fight against oppression in France and in the world. Committed to the fight against racism and sexism, she questions French society and, from her singular position, confronts it. Black or Muslim feminism, Islamophobia and the diversion of secularism, white fragility, French identity and injunction to assimilation, state racism and police harassment, colonial memory, popular cultures, American cinema and series. If Rokhaya Diallo's analyses touch her readers with so much power, it is because she manages to to link the political and the private, the body and the State, the unraveling of oppressions and the accompaniment of emancipations." From book jacket. Contents: 1. Racisme systémique et fragilité blanche — Supprimer le mot "race" de la constitution française : une décision dangereuse — A-t-on le droit de parler de racisme d'État ? — Pourquoi le racisme anti-Blancs n'existe pas — Le #sparadrapgate montre comment les spécificités physiques des noires sont ignorées en France — Merci de respecter les cheveux des Noires et des Noirs — Avançons main dans la main — 2. L'identité française en question — La France, tu l'aimes ou tu la fermes! — Français d'origine étrangère, nous refusons d'être la variable d'ajustement de l'élection présidentielle — Pourquoi la couleur de peau des champions du monde a-t-elle tant d'importance ? — Faut-il être un superhéros pour être un migrant acceptable en France ? — 3. Une islamophobie obsessionnelle — Ce que dévoile l'affaire Baby Loup — Voile : une obsession bien française — L'obsession française pour les femmes musulmanes vise le contrôle et non la libération — 4. État sécuritaire, révoltes, répression — Zyèd et Bouna, enfants sacrifiés de la République — Contrôles au faciès : il faut contrôler les contrôles d'identité — Quand la France reconnaîtra-t-elle un racisme systémique dans la police ? — France : vers l'institutionnalisation d'un état policier — Gilets jaunes : la colère populaire n'est jamais élégante — Les Gilets jaunes portent un nouvel éclairage sur les violences policières — Contre les discriminations, ne tirez pas sur Internet — L'anonymat, un précieux outil démocratique — 5. Femmes, féminisme — Non, le sexisme, ce n'est pas les "autres"! — Le voile n'est pas incompatible avec le féminisme — Femmes noires en politique : la citoyenneté sous conditions — La non-mixité, un outil politique indispensable — Ni putes ni voilées — Après Cologne, interroger les sources de la violence sexuelle — 6. Les États-Unis : un miroir du monde ? — Martin Luther King n'était pas le doux rêveur que tout le monde célèbre aujourd'hui — Mad Men, ma série bien aimée — Black Lives Matter, un nouveau souffle pour les voix des Noirs — Donald Trump ou le triste visage du communautarisme blanc — Rachel Dolezal : fausse noire et privilège blanc — 7. Cultures plurielles — Cannes au masculin — Les Oscars : César de l'inégalité — Les nouveaux visages du cinéma français — Pourquoi Apu, le personnage des Simpson est-il devenu insupportable ? — Débattre de l'appropriation culturelle sans s'ériger en police vestimentaire — Qui seront les super héros du XXIe siècle ?
La Littérature à l'heure de #MeToo by Hélène Merlin-Kajman.
Call Number: PN49 .M429 2020
ISBN: 9782490350124
Published/Created: 2020
Hélène Merlin-Kajman is a professor of French literature at the University of Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle). She has written novels as well as academic works. This recent publication discusses new questions that come from studying literature in the time of the #metoo movement. Updated values have brought into question how to study past writings that offend modern sensibilities and deeply offend the modern audience. How do we grapple with such writings, and even more importantly, how do we treat the still-living authors who were darlings of the intellectual elite when their behavior has proved criminal or very likely abusive? The 2020 Gabriel Matzneff case raised the question of how to treat the artists and their work when they have behaved reprehensibly. This text claims to examine the complicated issue objectively—neither skewing to the side of "politically-correct progressivism" which asks for "trigger warnings", nor by turning a blind eye to the blatant abuse of power by artists who have used their privileged position to exploit minors, hiding under the cover of their elite status as artists—an issue that has come up in retrospect with other artists, from Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov to American film director Woody Allen.
La puissance des mères : pour un nouveau sujet révolutionnaire by Fatima Ouassak
Call Number: HV8204 .O93 2020
ISBN: 9782348059377
Published/Created: 2020
Since the birth of the Fifth Republic, the French state has been waging a latent war against part of its population. Young people from working-class neighborhoods descended from postcolonial immigration undergo an operation, repeated daily, of "de-infantisation": they are not treated as children but as threats to the survival of the system. How many of them died because of this de-infantization? How many were killed by the police with impunity? How many mothers have mourned their children who were victims of racist crimes in court?
Based on the struggles led by the Folles of Place Vendôme in the 1980s, as well as the battles of the Mother's Front today, Fatima Ouassak shows, in this combative and hopeful book, the political potential of mothers. By systematically showing solidarity with their children, by refusing to play a buffer role between them and the violence of institutions, in short, by ceasing to be a force of social appeasement and relays of the unequal system, they will in turn become threats to the established order. This book aims to offer a political alternative supported by mothers, around a broken parenthood combining academic success and dignity, and an ecological project of territorial reconquest. Its message is truly revolutionary: by breaking the social pact of temperance which binds them in spite of themselves to the oppressive system, mothers will turn into dragons.
Le Consentement by Vanessa Springora
Call Number: PQ2719.P75 C66 2020
ISBN: 9782246822691
Published/Created: 2020
This book grapples with the ethics of consent between minors and adults in sexual relationships, and the abuse of power often exercised by the literary elite in France over minors and students under the guise of being mentors or muses. Springora was seduced at a young age by the celebrated writer Gabriel Matzneff. In this, her first book, she describes her experience and the lifetime impact this relationship had, and questions the ethics of how France tolerates and indulges these relationships. Matzneff wrote for many years about pedophilia. Springora writes, "For so many years, I have been circling in my cage, my dreams are filled with murder and revenge. Until the day when the solution finally presents itself, there, before my eyes, as obvious: to take the hunter in his own trap, to lock him in a book." Seduced at the age of fourteen by a famous fifty-something writer, Vanessa Springora portrays, three decades later, the hold that was exercised over her and the lasting mark of this relationship throughout her life as a woman. Beyond her intimate story, in this book she questions the excesses of an era and of a literary microcosm blinded by talent and notoriety. A phenomenal book translated into twenty-two languages and currently in the process of being adapted into a film.
Le Deuxième sexe de Simone de Beauvoir: un héritage admiré et contesté / Catherine Rodgers by Catherine Rodgers
Call Number: HQ1208.B36 R63 1998
ISBN: 2738472613
Published/Created: 1998
Le génie lesbien by Alice Coffin
Call Number: HQ75.6.F8 C64 2020
ISBN: 9782246821779
Published/Created: 2020
Alice Coffin is a French journalist and lesbian activist. Her field of expertise is the study of media coverage of LGBTI issues. Table of Contents: 1. Adrophobie: Une lesbienne à l'Élysée; 2. Instantanés de la grande scène patriarcale, La Barbe!: Compétents ou compatibles?; L'homme et l'artiste ou L'artiste est l'homme?; Arts et standards; La molle farandole; Cotte de mailles féministe 3. Journalistes, vous avez un cul!: Neutralité, objectivité, virilité; Salles de rédaction, salles blanches et salles stériles; "La neutralité nést pas une option pour couvrir Trump"; Journalitantisme; Accountability 4. La placardologie française; Ces stars françaises qui refusent de faire leur coming out;"Les médias sont l'industrie chargée de verrouiller les portes du placard";Role models;Communautés, au placard!; Spectaculariser la vie privée; La faiblesse militante; Alcoolique non anonyme; Stand up, come out! 5. Lesbiennes d'intérêt général: The L Word; Les meilleures militantes du monde; La menace lesbienne; Qui a peur de la PMA?; Le corps lesbien; Butchs; Gouines Théorie; Le Pulp; Un gazon à soi 6. La guerre des hommes: Le sacrilège du "les"; Quand on accuse une féministe d'exagérer; Dominique, Bertrand, Denis, Roman, Luc et les autre; Les pervers pépères du cinéma; Pour en finir avec l'androbsession; Remerciement.
Le néo-féminisme contre la famille by Jean Gabard
Published/Created: 2023
Jean Gabard was a teacher. He defends dignity and equality and therefore feminism. He has written numerous essays and articles on the relationships between men and women, gender equality, the fight against sexist sterotypes, harassment and violence against women. He discusses what he calls neo-feminism as an ideology that has become sexist in itself and in its effort to create a "new man". [Neo-feminism Against the Family]
Les Glorieuses : chroniques d'une féministe by Rebecca Amsellem ; illustrations, Clémentine du Pontavice.
Call Number: HQ1615.A47 A3 2018
ISBN: 9782842306144
Published/Created: 2018
Three years ago, Rebecca Amsellem created the feminist newsletter Les Glorieuses, which questions the notion of equality within our society every week through themes such as politics, culture or gender. In the twenty chronicles of this book, the author combines personal and even intimate experiences and activist remarks in order to provoke a deep reflection on the place of women. The book honors Olympe de Gouges, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, Marguerite Durand, who launched La Fronde (the first daily newspaper designed and edited by women), but also Nina Simone, Virginia Woolf and so many other figures who have marked history. They are the Glorious, as Rebecca Amsellem reminds us. They and all the others, because there are as many feminisms as there are women. Table of Contents: Avant-propos; Isabella et moi; Un demi piment si tout va bien; Jeune, surdouée et noire; Personne n'est parfaite; On recommence quand?; Non mais je rêve!; Un col roulé peut en cacher un autre; Marianne à l'Opéra; Il était une fois; Hommes sans filtre; Mauvais vin et poulet frit; Dernière danse; J'ai un milliard de soeurs; Pause clope; En avoir ou pas; Zone grise; Prendre un bain et faire la révolution; J'ai failli perdre mon oeil pour du Safran; Le pacte; Tiens-toi droite!; Sources.
Les Nouvelles Femmes de Droite by Magali Della Sudda
Call Number: JC573.2.F8 D435 2022
Published/Created: 2022
Le traitement juridique des violences conjugales, la sanction déjouée by Petra Cador
Call Number: KJV8230 .C33 2005
ISBN: 2747586251
Published/Created: 2005
Le triangle et l'hexagone : réflexions sur une identité noire by Maboula Soumahoro
Call Number: DC34.5.B55 S68 2020
ISBN: 9782348041952
Published/Created: 2020
Le ventre des femmes : capitalisme, racialisation, féminisme by Françoise Vergès
Call Number: HQ766.5.R4 V47 2017
ISBN: 9782226395252
Published/Created: 2017
Le voile de la mariée : jeunes musulmanes, voile et projet matrimonial en France by Amel Boubekeur
Call Number: HQ1613 .B68 2004
ISBN: 2747562972
Published/Created: 2004
Amel Boubekeur is a French-Algerian researcher. She was a resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. Prior to joining Carnegie she was head of the Islam and Europe Programme at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. She is a research fellow at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and has taught at the École Normale Supérieure and the Stanford University Center in Paris. Her research focuses on Maghreb country politics, Euro–Arab relations, and Islam in Europe. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago and is a regular consultant for various United Nations agencies, the European Commission, and the Open Society Institute. Preface to this work by Farhad Khosrokhavar.
Libérées! : le combat féministe se gagne devant le panier de linge sale by Titiou Lecoq
Call Number: HQ1075.5.F8 L43 2017
ISBN: 9782213705347
Published/Created: 2017
A book full of down-to-earth ideas, practical advice and insights into a couple’s dynamics.
It illuminates what’ is expected of women, and invisible pressures they face in their homelife. Written in a colloquial French and showing a French point of view on recent events and social behaviors. [Freed Women]
Mise à feu : roman by Clara Ysé
ISBN: 9782246827603
Published/Created: 2021
Mon islam, ma liberté by Kahina Bahloul
ISBN: 9782226456854
Published/Created: 2021
Kahina Bahloul was born in 1979 to a French mother and an Muslim Berber father from the Kabyle region of Algeria. She moved to Paris at 22 to study Islamology. She is now France's first female imam. Her book reflects her views that there is nothing in the Quran that forbids a woman from becoming an Imam.
Noire n'est pas mon métier by Collectif
Call Number: PN2637 .N65 2018
ISBN: 9782021401196
Published/Created: 2018
Aïssa Maïga unites the voices of 16 black actresses who share their experiences of racism in French cinema. Stéréotypes, racisme et diversité : 16 actrices témoignent. Nadege Beausson-Diagne - Mata Gabin - Maïmouna Gueye - Eye Haïdara - Rachel Khan - Aïssa Maïga - Sara Martins - Marie-Philomène NGA - Sabine Pakora - Firmine Richard - Sonia Rolland - Magaajyia Silberfeld - Shirley Souagnon - Assa Sylla - Karidja Touré - France Zobda. [Black is not my job]
Notre colère sur vos murs / Collages Féminicides Paris by photos de Tay Calenda et Léa Michaëlis
Call Number: HV6250.4.W65 C6246 2021
ISBN: 9782207164341
Published/Created: 2021
Images of the collages put up by women around France, usually at night, to draw attention to femicide and violence against women.
On tue une femme : le féminicide : histoire et actualités / sous la direction de L. Bodiou by L. Bodiou
Call Number: HV6250.4.W65 O53 2019
ISBN: 9791037000859
Published/Created: 2019
Pour une Critique Féministe Décoloniale by Sabine Masson
Published/Created: 2016
Pour une théorie générale de l'exploitation : des différentes formes d'extorsion de travail aujourd'hui by Christine Delphy ; préface de Mélissa Blais et Isabelle Courcy
Call Number: HD6060.6 .D44 2015
ISBN: 9782849504598
Published/Created: 2015
Discusses the division of labor along gender lines and exploitation of women in employment situations.
Qu'est-ce qui pourrait sauver l'amour? by Thérèse Jacob-Hargot.
Call Number: HQ21 .J25 2020
ISBN: 9782226449580
Published/Created: 2020
Thérèse Jacob-Hargot is a Belgian-born essayist and sexologist who practices in France. She also published "Une Jeunesse sexuellement libérée (ou presque)" [A sexually liberated youth (or almost)] in 2016. Jacob-Hargot has controversial opinions that often make both feminists and conservatives uncomfortable. She has been called an alter-feminist along with Eugénie Bastié. She advocates for women to define their identity on their own terms, not by adopting and emulating the same attitudes and outlooks of men. She encourages the natural "rhythm method of contraception" rather than the hormonal approach of "the pill", and seeks a less dismissive attitude toward motherhood within the feminist label—counter to the inherited feminism of Simone de Beauvoir. Table of Contents: I. État des lieux 1."Faire l'amour", un mode de relation en voie de disparition 2. Le gentil, le macho et le porc 3. Faire l'amour sans avoir un enfant, avoir un enfant sans faire l'amour 4. Les nouveaux McDo du sexe 5. De l'amour au polyamour II. Causes 6. Pouvoir baiser comme un homme, c'est être féministe, vraiment? 7. Dominez la mère (terre) et soumettez-la! 8. Ce que femme veut, le médicin le veut 9. L'ouverture du supermarché médical 10. La pilule, l'oeuvre d'une triple alliance III. Alternative 11. Un savoir de femmes sur la fertilité, véritable emblème féministe 12. Une méthode zéro déchet, une sexualité écologiquement correct 13. Reconnecter les femmes élevées hors sol 14. D'une sexualité pulsionnelle 15. Les hommes sont des chevaliers qui s'ignorent 16. Lâcher prise avec la maternité 17. La cohérence comme vertu 18. Femmes puissantes 19. Si je n'ai pas l'amour, je ne suis rien Conclusion: avant-gardisme.
Simone de Beauvoir, les clefs de la liberté by Élisabeth Badinter, Laurent Greilsamer, Nancy Huston, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, Josyane Savigneau, Robert Solé, Philippe Sollers
Call Number: PQ2603.E362 Z8778 2019
ISBN: 9782815932370
Published/Created: 2019
Inventer sa vie / Laurent Greilsamer -- Seule à Marseille / Simone de Beauvoir -- Le ciné-club / Robert Solé -- Elle nous a ouvert les portes de la liberté / Élisabeth Badinter -- De l'indifférence à l'engagement / Laurent Greilsamer -- L'autre Beauvoir / Nancy Huston -- Sartre et Beauvoir défient leur époque / Philippe Sollers -- Écrire est la grande affaire de sa vie / Josyane Savigneau -- La Pléiade, enfin! / Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir -- Quatre amours -- Une vie / illustrée par Jochen Gerner.
Souffles de la raison : liberticide, féminicide et fanatisme : essai by Amin Zaoui
ISBN: 9789931653448
Published/Created: 2021
Une culture du viol à la française : du "troussage de domestique" à la "liberté d'importuner" by Valérie Rey-Robert
Call Number: HV6569.F8 R49 2019
ISBN: 9782377290765
Published/Created: 2019
Rape culture affects all cultures, all countries. However, it has very specific particularities depending on the environment in which it is expressed and developed. In France, each time the question of sexual violence is raised in the public debate, the same reluctance is expressed. Some rise up to denounce the horrible reactionary moralism which would like to condemn the sexual freedom so dearly acquired, to harm the national love identity by importing Puritanism into the land of freedoms. With a well-chosen term and a certain hypocrisy, French love is evoked in terms of gallantry, courtesy or licentiousness. We praise our traditions, the attention paid to women and the sophistication of our games of seduction. Behind this charming vocabulary, the reality is much less glamorous. In this documented and innovative essay, the author analyzes and defines sexual violence, debunks all our preconceived ideas and undermines the argument that disempowers rapists. She insists on the hexagonal specificities of the concept of "rape culture", demystifies the literary and artistic heritage, and demonstrates, point by point, that it is possible to deconstruct gender stereotypes and educate men not to rape. Valérie Rey-Robert is a feminist activist. She has been fighting sexual violence for nearly twenty years and runs the blog “Crêpe Georgette”.
Une théorie féministe de la violence : pour une politique antiraciste de la protection by Françoise Vergès
Call Number: HV6250.4.W65 V453 2020
ISBN: 9782358722049
Published/Created: 2020
Un féminisme décolonial by Françoise Vergès
Call Number: HQ1190 .V465 2019
ISBN: 9782358721745
Published/Created: 2019
Universalisme by Julien Suaudeau, Mame-Fatou Niang
ISBN: 9782381910482
Published/Created: 2022
Un universalisme si particulier : féminisme et exception française (1980-2010) by Christine Delphy
Call Number: HQ1613 .D364 2010
ISBN: 9782849502648
Published/Created: 2010
Discusses the exceptional aspects of Feminism in France in connection with the concept of universalism.
Violences conjugales : en guise d'amour by Liliane Daligand and Véronique Bedin
Call Number: HV6626.23.F7 D35 2006
ISBN: 2226175091
Published/Created: 2006
Vivre la Trans Identité by Thierry Bunas
Call Number: HQ77.9 .B86 2022
ISBN: 9791093119472
Published/Created: 2022
Gender nonconformity. Transgender people. Transsexualism.
À coups de cases et de bulles : les violences faites aux femmes dans la bande dessinée by Frédéric Chauvaud, Lydie Bodiou, Jean-Philippe Martin, Héloïse Morel ; les auteurs: Laurent Bihl [and nineteen others]
Call Number: PN6714 .A27 2023
ISBN: 9782753586239
Published/Created: 2023
The first work to address violence against women in the 9th art, À coups de cases et de bulles is able to show the way in which Franco-Belgian comics, and also manga treat attacks and violence. Comics, which continue to open new projects and revisit already established areas, either by renewing them or by placing them in a tradition, continue to engage the imagination of contemporary societies. Daily newspapers, weeklies and quarterlies now give more and more space, but this is rarely the case for brutality, insults and rapes they suffer. And yet, the graphic stories are full of women victims of the most diverse forms of violence: forced marriages, humiliation, physical attacks, rape. Comic strips relate to the testimony and literature of reality, others belong to the register of the imagination, but all deal with a universal scourge, sometimes in a single panel, other times in several pages. The aim of this work is to reverse common perspectives, to show that women are not confined to the category of seductive women, nor to that of stooges, nor to those of sole victims. Indeed, even humiliated, brutalized, martyred, they retain their dignity or their pride.

For a list of online resources on contemporary feminism see 20th-21st Century on the Related Resources Section.

Archives du Féminisme External
This site connects researchers to primary sources relating to feminism in France. Based in Angers, the center promotes research that draws connections between primary documents in French history and modern-day feminist theory.
Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir External
The Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Center was created in 1982 by Carole Roussopoulos, Delphine Seyrig and Ioana Wieder. These three feminist activists, all three involved in videography, put conservation and creation of audiovisual documents at the heart of their objectives. Their focus was the history of women, their rights, their struggles, and their creations. They also pursue their own work as directors. Closed after ten years of existence, the Center began a new life in 2003, with a new team. From this “first” period of the Centre, there remained not only memories, but also various documents. The current team processed these documents in order to reconstruct the history concerning the years 1982-1993 and to contact the people who had participated in this adventure to ask them to share their memories and testimonies.
The primary mission of the Center is to disseminate, preserve, and enrich the collection of audiovisual documents, mainly made up of videos, relating to the history of women, their struggles, their creations. Disseminating and promoting the collection means first of all ensuring screenings, participating in festivals, meetings. It is also to allow access to a large public to the catalog and to film extracts thanks to a database that can be consulted online and to the reception of researchers who wish to watch films on site at the Center. Finally, it means organizing the rental and sale of films or excerpts.
Preserving means fighting against the effects of time and keeping up with technological developments by transposing documents produced with means that are no longer in use onto permanent media. This part of the work is carried out in conjunction with structures such as the National Library of France and the Forum des Images, in Paris. Continuously add to the catalog by staying in touch with current creation and by integrating new productions whose directors entrust the dissemination and distribution to the Centre. To enrich is also to ensure the capture of various feminist manifestations.
Debout! Une Histoire du Mouvement de Libération des Femmes External
A documentary from the Centre Hubertine Auclert.
Les Affiches de Mai 68 ou L'imagination graphique External
This exibition catalog includes images of 70 posters from the May 1968 student and worker protests. Charles Perussaux prepared the catalog and exhibition, which was held in the Salle Mortreuil of the Bibliothèque nationale, Feb. 17-Mar. 31, 1982. On cover: Révolution essentielle. Bibliography: p.1 gives bibliographic information on each print and divides them into various workshops and subjects some of which address the grievances of women, most of which address injustices due to social class.

Finding Additional Materials in the Library's Online Catalog

The Library of Congress Online Catalog represents a collection of over 18 million catalog records for books, serials, manuscripts, maps, music, recordings, images, and electronic resources in the Library of Congress collections. To find additional materials about Women in the French Revolution it is useful to browse by authorized subject heading. The following Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) will reveal the most relevant materials in the Library's collections.

There will be some overlap, and these subject headings are not always entirely comprehensive. For example, Women revolutionaries--France--Biography will not bring you every biography on revolutionary women in France. You will find additional works under Women intellectuals--France--Biography.

French Women & Feminists in History: A Resource Guide