New Volume of YFS: “The French Seventies”, Edited by Richard J. Golsan and Lynn A. Higgins

August 26, 2024

Number 143 of Yale French Studies, “The French Seventies,” a reexamination of 1970s France as a decade of intellectual, cultural, and political consequence, both then and now, reintroduces and reorients readers to a decade typically considered a period of disillusionment and malaise in the wake of the 1960s. This collection of essays, edited by Richard J. Golsan and Lynn A. Higgins, shows that the era was in fact a period of intellectual, cultural, and political ferment. It was a time not of spectacular leaps forward but rather of searching, regrouping, and cultivating trends that would flower in the 1980s and beyond, for better or worse.

 
The volume offers interdisciplinary scholarly essays on history, film, national identity as articulated in the mode rétro, social and literary movements, and more. Interviews and personal history essays by major figures who actively participated in this decade add further dimension to this broad collection.

Richard J. Golsan is University Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University and Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Institute. His books include Vichy’s AfterlifeRené Girard and Myth: An Introduction, and Justice in Lyon: Klaus Barbie and France’s First Trial for Crimes against Humanity

Lynn A. Higgins is the Edward Tuck Professor of French Studies Emerita at Dartmouth College. Her books include New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar FranceRape and Representation (coedited with Brenda Silver); and Bertrand Tavernier.