Home -- General -- Events -- Graduates -- Undergraduates -- High School Teachers -- Faculty

	General   Program   Abstracts   Call for Papers   Registration   Conference Hotel   Transportation  & Maps   Tallahassee   Contact us

ABSTRACTS Ethan Katz (University of Wisconsin) Memory at the Front: The Struggle Over Revolutionary Commemoration in Occupied France, 1940-1944 Despite the recent explosion of historical scholarship on the period of Occupied France, with regard to memory studies, the years of Vichy remain the parenthesis which Charles De Gaulle proclaimed them to be. The Occupation period is a striking example of how scholarship on memory has failed to address certain essential questions in French historiography. The memory of the French Revolution during the Occupation years has received no serious examination, despite its paramount importance to the events of these years and their outcome. In this paper I argue that the central Revolutionary commemoration of July 14 took on a critical role during the Occupation years. First, the treatment of this anniversary by Vichy, Resistance forces, and collaborationists sharpened and clarified the political divisions and alliances of the period. Secondly, July 14 was the occasion when each of these political forces chose to glorify, qualify, or condemn the Revolution. Their respective selected symbols, words, ceremonies, and silences surrounding the day projected competing narratives of the French past and visions for the post-war French future. Finally, July 14 served to gauge the French public’s response to the various manipulations of the memory of the Revolution, thereby becoming a vital testing ground for the political direction of the nation. To reconstruct this story, I have drawn on newspaper accounts and editorials of the authorized and underground presses, as well as propaganda tracts, speeches and writings of key political figures, and prefectoral reports surrounding the day’s events. In Occupied France, July 14 served as a pivotal annual moment when the memory of the French Revolution became the magnifying lens through which present ideas, symbols, people and events were projected and re-evaluated. The shifting meanings of July 14 between 1940 and 1944 had consequences that reached well into the postwar era. An understanding of their significance casts the work of scholars such as Henry Rousso in a critical new light.

440 Diffenbaugh | Tallahassee, Fl. 32306-1515 | ICFFS@www.fsu.edu | Tel 850.644.7636 | Fax 850 644 9917 Copyright© 2001 Florida State University. All rights reserved.  Questions/ Comments - contact the sitedeveloper