|
Associate Professor of French, Institute of French Studies
Ph.D., M.A. (Modern French History), University of Chicago ; B.A. (Philosophy), Haverford College
Email:
Research Interests: Cultural history of modern France; memory and history; territorial identities; astrology and mass culture.
Selected Works:
"La mesure de l'érudition. Le Comité des Travaux Historiques et ses correspondants provinciaux (1830–1870)," in Bruno Dumons, ed., La fabrique de l'honneur. Les médailles et les décorations en France. (PU Rennes, 2009)
"'A World of Their Own': Searching for Popular Culture in the French Countryside," forthcoming in French Politics, Culture & Society (2009).
"Nostredame or Quasimodo? Nostradamus Between Biography and Legend," forthcoming in Esopus Magazine (2009).
Why France? American Historians Reflect on an Enduring Fascination, co-edited with Laura Lee Downs (Cornell University Press, 2007). Translated into French as Pourquoi la France? Des historiens américains racontent leur passion pour l'Héxagone (Le Seuil, 2007).
"In Praise of Modest Men: Self-Display and Self-Effacement in Nineteenth-Century France," French History 20, no. 2 (June 2006): 182-203.
"L'état français et le culte malaisé des souvenirs locaux, 1830-1880," Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle 29 (2nd semester 2004): 13-29.
"L'impossible présence de l'historien," French Politics, Culture & Society 22, no. 2 (summer 2004): 91-108.
The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (Cornell University Press, 2003)
"Une France locale: The Local Past in Recent French Scholarship," French Historical Studies 26, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 539-59.
"La représentation historique du pays, entre l'état et la société civile," Romantisme, revue du XIXe siècle 110 (2000).
"Town, Nation, or Humanity? Festive Delineations of Place and Past in Northern France, 1825-1865," The Journal of Modern History 72, no. 3 (2000).
"Parisian Littérateurs, Provincial Journeys and the Construction of National Unity in Post-Revolutionary France," Past and Present 151 (1996).
Bio
Stéphane Gerson, Associate Professor of French and French Studies, Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1997).
Born and raised in Belgium, Stéphane Gerson received a B.A. in philosophy from Haverford College in 1988 and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 1997. His is a cultural historian of modern France, with particular interests in memory and history, political culture, place and identity, and more recently the occult and the irrational.
Much of Gerson’s work has revolved around the ways people respond to upheaval and traumatic changes that they associate with modernity. He is especially intrigued by the aftermath of events that, like the French Revolution, can be at once liberating and deeply traumatic. His research investigates how men and women have fashioned meaning, defined public identities, and granted coherence to their world when this world seems unrecognizable. Gerson began with the passionate interest in the local past in nineteenth-century France: historical research, monuments to great men, archeological digs, local museums, historical pageants, and more. This cult of local memories, so strong during a period of political and industrial revolutions, sought a deeper understanding of one’s pays (land) and a richer sense of place. By providing moral teachings, civic participation, social cohesion, and true national unity, it promised to recompose localities and nation alike. Gerson’s book on the topic, The Pride of Place: Local Memories and Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (2003), won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History and the Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies. This research also won the William Koren Jr. Prize for best article on French history.
Gerson is presently working on a book entitled “Nostradamus. How an Obscure French Doctor Became the West’s Prophet of Doom” (St. Martin’s Press). This is the first history of the Nostradamus phenomenon -- man, predictions, and legend -- from the Renaissance to 9/11 and beyond. Nostradamus has captured the West’s imagination for five centuries. From France to the U.S., millions have consulted his prophecies about the rise of dictators, the death of presidents, and the end of the world. And yet, we hardly know who he was, why his predictions became so influential, and how they have helped people forge ahead during traumatic times. More significantly, we hardly grasp the broader meaning of it all: what we talk about when we talk about Nostradamus. “Scare Us, Nostradamus” is the historical biography of a belief: the endless faith that we can know tomorrow and master our fears through the powers of an extraordinary seer. The book probes our relationships with fear, horror, and the future. Nostradamus has endured over time because he has enabled us to master our fears, play with them in a controlled fashion, and gain distance from them as well.
Gerson is also working on a new edition of Nostradamus’ Prophecies for Penguin Classics. His following project will examine responses to industrial catastrophes in nineteenth-century France. It is about how societies anticipate, experience, assimilate, and respond to catastrophes that are both without precedent and by-products of what it defines as modernity. The project will examine medical responses; attitudes towards death (and the death of children); the role of politicians (rulers as compassionate fathers?); changes in technology, safety, and insurance; various modes of explanation (science, religion, prophecy); forms of investigation and legal resolution; the search for culprits (including Jews); media depictions of such events; martyrdom and heroism; commemorations; and feelings of national identity.
Gerson’s other area of interest revolves around the writing of history. He explored historian Alain Corbin’s approach to cultural history in a special issue of French Politics, Culture & Society which he guest-edited in 2004. He also delved into historian Eugen Weber’s understanding of popular culture, and how that concept has changed over the past three decades (French Politics, Culture & Society, 2009). Finally, Gerson and Laura Lee Downs edited a collection of autobiographical essays by American historians of France: Why France? American Historians Reflect on an Enduring Fascination (Cornell, 2007, translated into French by Le Seuil). The book tries to understand why thousands of American historians have devoted their careers to France over the course of the twentieth century. How have they imagined and depicted France? And how have their various relationships with France — intellectual, professional, and personal — changed over the years? These questions open onto broader ones: the inflections of the Franco-American relationship; the meanings of ‘France’ in American thought and society, and the relationship between intellectual milieus and international relations.
Gerson’s teaching includes French civilization, cultural theory, and cultural history. He has also created a course that trains doctoral students to teach French civilization.
 Update your faculty profile
|
