Best Suffrage Science Podcasts (2025)

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Julie Fette, "Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature" (Routledge, 2025) 41:30

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1h ago41:30

41:30

Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature (Routledge, 2025) investigates the gender representations that French children's literature transmits to readers today. Using an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach, this book grounds its literary analysis in a sociohistorical examination of three key institutions – libraries, book…

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Sarah Griswold, "Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate" (Cornell UP, 2025) 55:19

3d ago55:19

55:19

In Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate (Cornell UP, 2025), Dr. Sarah Griswold shows how the Levant became a crucial front in a post-1918 fight over the French past—a contingent and contradictory but always hard-charging struggle over a forgotten "heritage mandate." Many scholars, clergy, pundits, politicians, and investors pe…

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Kathryn Robson, "Beyond the Happy Ending: Imagining Happiness in Contemporary French Women's Writing and Film" (Liverpool UP, 2025) 47:07

15d ago47:07

47:07

In Kathryn Robson's Beyond the Happy Ending: Imagining Happiness in Contemporary French Women's Writing and Film (Liverpool UP, 2025), happiness (and the question of how to define, measure and facilitate it) has become a key theme in political, economic and social discourses in recent decades in France and elsewhere, yet research on happiness in Fr…

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Maurice Samuels, "Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair" (Yale UP, 2024) 39:17

16d ago39:17

39:17

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (Yale UP, 2024), Maurice Samuels gives readers new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus’s early life in Paris, his prom…

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Paul Galvez, "Courbet's Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting" (Yale UP, 2022) 1:06:22

20d ago1:06:22

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Between 1862 and 1866 Gustave Courbet embarked on a series of sensuous landscape paintings that would later inspire the likes of Monet, Pissarro, and Cézanne. This series has long been neglected in favor of Courbet’s paintings of rural French life. Courbet's Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting (Yale UP, 2022) explores these astonishing paint…

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William Doyle, "Napoleon at Peace: How to End a Revolution" (Reaktion Books, 2022) 19:09

21d ago19:09

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The French Revolution facilitated the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, but after gaining power he knew that his first task was to end it. In this book William Doyle describes how he did so, beginning with the three large issues that had destabilized revolutionary France: war, religion, and monarchy. Doyle shows how, as First Consul of the Republic, Napo…

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Gianna Englert, "Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:13:05

25d ago1:13:05

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Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wish or need to have? With recent arguments "against democracy" and fears about the rise of populism, there is growing scepticism about whether liberalism and democracy can continue to survive together.…

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Madeleine Chalmers, "French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn" (Edinburgh UP, 2024) 31:50

26d ago31:50

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French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) traces a genealogy of thinking and writing about technology, which takes us from the French avant-gardes to the contemporary 'nonhuman turn' in Anglo-American theory via the Surrealists, Gilbert Simondon, and Gilles Deleuze. Tracking the unruly transition from Cat…

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Daniel J. Sherman, "Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 1:10:46

1M ago1:10:46

1:10:46

In this episode, Sarah talks to Daniel J. Sherman about his most recent book, Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940 (U Chicago Press, 2025). Sensations is a history of the early years of professional archaeology in France through two controversies – the first in Carthage in what the French protectorate of Tunisia a…

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Miranda Spieler, "Slaves in Paris: Hidden Lives and Fugitive Histories" (Harvard UP, 2025) 53:33

1M ago53:33

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In the decades leading up to the French Revolution, when Paris was celebrated as an oasis of liberty, slaves fled there, hoping to be freed. They pictured Paris as a refuge from France’s notorious slave-trading ports. The French were late to the slave trade, but they dominated the global market in enslaved people by the late 1780s. This explosive g…

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Justine De Young, "The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris" (Bloomsbury, 2025) 1:11:17

1M ago1:11:17

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Using artworks by Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others, The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Justine De Young explores how women and artists in Impressionist Paris (1855-1885) crafted their public images to exploit and resist stereotypes.…

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Michelle Bumatay, "On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power" (Ohio State UP, 2025) 49:29

1M ago49:29

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On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power (The Ohio State UP, 2025) is the first book-length study in English about Black francophone cartoonists and their work. Author Michelle Bumatay decenters Eurocentric conceptions of francophone comic art and foregrounds the ubiquity of Western racial stereotypes encoded in mainstream French and Belgi…

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Eric T. Jennings, "Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean" (Yale UP, 2025) 51:51

1M ago51:51

51:51

Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywhere. It is a key ingredient in dishes ranging from crème brûlée to Japanese purin. It is the quintessential ice cream flavor in the United States. In Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean (Yale UP, …

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Matt Myers, "The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:13:03

1M ago1:13:03

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The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been in power simultaneously across the continent. New forms of mobilisation led by female, immigrant, and young wage-earners seemed to reflect the growing strength of the workers' movement rather than its …

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Todd McGowan, "The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:01:10

1M ago1:01:10

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The difficulty of Jacques Lacan's thought is notorious. The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan cuts through this difficulty to provide a clear, jargon-free approach to understanding it. The book describes Lacan's life, the context from which he emerged, and the reception of his theory. Readers will come away with an understanding of concepts s…

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Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz and Sara Garbagnoli "La Pensée Wittig: Une Introduction" (Payot, 2025) 43:23

1M ago43:23

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How is it possible to be a subject when faced with oppression? The revolutionary thought and work of French novelist and lesbian thinker Monique Wittig are today in dialogue with feminist and LGBTQIA+ analyses and politics. Her materialist theorization of lesbianism subfuses contemporary feminism and queer political and social movements. By proposi…

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I Have Avenged America: Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Haiti’s Fight for Freedom 56:17

2M ago56:17

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“My name has become a horror to all those who want slavery,” declared Jean‑Jacques Dessalines as he announced the independence of Haiti, the most radical nation‑state during the Age of Revolution and the first country ever to permanently outlaw slavery. Enslaved for the first thirty years of his life, Dessalines (c. 1758–1806) joined the revolution…

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Alex R. Tipei, "Unintended Nations: How French Liberals' Empire of Civilization Remade Southeast Europe and the Post-Napoleonic World" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2025) 1:01:55

2M ago1:01:55

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In the wake of Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, French liberals set out to create an informal empire. Their efforts to cultivate unequal partnerships with Christian, Greek-speaking elites in southeast Europe shaped national identities and structured global civilizational hierarchies over the decades that followed. Unintended Nations: France’s Empire of C…

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Kevin Passmore, "The Maginot Line: A New History of the Fall of France" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:06:48

2M ago1:06:48

1:06:48

The Maginot Line was a marvel of 1930s engineering. The huge forts, up to eighty meters underground, contained hospitals, modern kitchens, telephone exchanges, and even electric trains. Kilometres of underground galleries led to casements hidden in the terrain, and turrets that rose from the ground to fire upon the enemy. The fortifications were in…

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Laura Hobson Faure, "Who Will Rescue Us?: The Story of the Jewish Children who Fled to France and America During the Holocaust" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:12:22

2M ago1:12:22

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The first account of Jewish children’s flight from Nazi Germany to France—and their subsequent escape to America from the Vichy regime At the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. While 10,000 of them escaped to Britain in the Kindertransport, only some 500 found a new home in France. H…

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Christopher C. Gorham, "Matisse at War: Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France" (Citadel Press, 2025) 48:18

2M ago48:18

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In 1940, with the Nazis sweeping through France, Henri Matisse found himself at a personal and artistic crossroads. His 42-year marriage had ended, he was gravely ill, and after decades at the forefront of modern art, he was beset by doubt. As scores of famous figures escaped the country, Matisse took refuge in Nice, with his companion, Lydia Delec…

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Robert Ivermee, "Glorious Failure: The Forgotten History of French Imperialism in India" (Oxford UP, 2025) 55:54

2M ago55:54

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This is a powerful new account of a chapter in history that is crucial to understand, yet often overlooked. For 150 years, from the reign of Louis XIV to the downfall of Napoleon, France was an aggressive imperial power in South Asia, driven by the pursuit of greatness and riches. Through their East India company and state, the French established a…

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Diana Souhami, "No Modernism Without Lesbians" (Head of Zeus Book, 2020) 38:35

2M ago38:35

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Diana Souhami talks about her new book No Modernism Without Lesbians, out 2020 with Head of Zeus books. A Sunday Times Book of the Year 2020. This is the extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place – Paris, between the wars – fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and…

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Chris Millington, "A History of Fascism in France: From the First World War to the National Front" (Bloomsbury, 2019) 1:03:09

2M ago1:03:09

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FASCISM...FRANCE. Two words/ideas that scholars have spent much time and energy debating in relationship to one another. Chris Millington's A History of Fascism in France: From the First World War to the National Front (Bloomsbury, 2019) is a work of synthesis that also draws on the author's own research for key examples and evidence to support its…

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Jérémy Filet, "The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational Travel and Small-States' Diplomacy" (Manchester UP, 2025) 36:04

3M ago36:04

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The Jacobites and the Grand Tour: Educational travel and small-states' diplomacy (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Jérémy Filet is the first monograph to fully examine the intersecting networks of Jacobites and travellers to the continent. In the book, Dr. Filet considers how small states used official diplomacy and deployed soft power - e…

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Peter K. Andersson, "The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour" (Oxford UP, 2025) 43:52

3M ago43:52

43:52

A history of the dandy from below, from Beau Brummell and Baudelaire to Bowie and Bolan... and beyond. The historical figure of the dandy has commonly been described as an upper-class gentleman, often exemplified by well-known men such as Beau Brummell, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and Max Beerbohm. But there is a broader history to be told abo…

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Mark Braude, "The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Empire to Exile" (Penguin Press, 2018) 1:02:08

3M ago1:02:08

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I must’ve been a kid when I first heard the palindrome “Able I was ere I saw Elba”. Napoleon didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. “Elba” meant even less. Decades later, I had learned a little more about Napoleon and his time there, but not that all that much it turns out. And then came Mark Braude’s The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon on Elba from Empi…

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Charly Coleman, "The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment" (Stanford UP, 2021) 1:02:34

3M ago1:02:34

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Charly Coleman's latest book, The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press, 2021) is at once a history of ideas, the economy, religion, and material culture. Pursuing the imbrication of the economy and theology with respect to both worldly and spiritual value and wealth, the book explores…

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Megan Brown, "The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community" (Harvard UP, 2022) 1:04:55

3M ago1:04:55

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In The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community (Harvard University Press, 2022), Dr. Megan Brown details the surprising story of how Algeria joined and then left the postwar European Economic Community and what its past inclusion means for extracontinental membership in today’s European Union. On their face, the mid-1950s …

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Christy Pichichero, "The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon" (Cornell UP, 2018) 1:03:30

4M ago1:03:30

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Covering the pivotal period from the mid-seventeenth century through the era of the French Revolution, Christy Pichichero's The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon (Cornell University Press, 2018; paperback ed. 2020) is a fascinating interdisciplinary study that pushes us to rethink our ideas abou…

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Julian Jackson, "De Gaulle" (Harvard UP, 2018) 1:11:02

4M ago1:11:02

1:11:02

Charles de Gaulle is one of the greatest figures of twentieth century history. If Sir Winston Churchill was (in the words of Harold Macmillan) the "greatest Englishman In history", then Charles de Gaulle was without a doubt, the greatest Frenchman since Napoleon Bonaparte. Why so? In the early summer of 1940, when France was overrun by German troop…

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Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The Politics of Involuntary Childlessness in Twentieth-Century France" (Manchester UP, 2025) 42:35

4M ago42:35

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An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childlessness in twentieth-century France (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Margaret Andersen explores fraught political and cultural meanings attached to the notion of an "ideal" family size. When s…

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Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira, "Ascending Republic: The Ballooning Revival in Nineteenth-Century France" (MIT Press, 2025) 1:13:42

4M ago1:13:42

1:13:42

On August 27, 1783, a large crowd gathered in Paris to watch the first ascent of a hydrogen balloon. Despite the initial feverish enthusiasm, by the mid-nineteenth century the balloon remained relatively unchanged and was no longer seen as the harbinger of a new era. Yet that all changed in the last third of the century, when following the traumati…

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Julie Singer, "Out of the Mouths of Babes: Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2025) 43:13

5M ago43:13

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A wide-ranging study of the rich questions raised by speaking infants in medieval French literature. Medieval literature is full of strange moments when infants (even fetuses) speak. In Out of the Mouths of Babes: Infant Voices in Medieval French Literature, (U Chicago Press, 2025) Julie Singer explores the unsettling questions raised by these even…

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Elise Franklin "Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the Welfare State in France" (University of Nebraska Press, 2024) 1:14:18

5M ago1:14:18

1:14:18

Today’s episode is a conversation with Dr. Elise Franklin whose first book, Disintegrating Empire: Algerian Family Migration and the Limits of the Welfare State in France, was published by the University of Nebraska Press (2024). Distintegrating Empire examines the processes of decolonization through the intersecting histories of the French welfare…

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Selda Altan, "Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway" (Stanford UP, 2024) 53:51

6M ago53:51

53:51

Chinese workers helped build the modern world. They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the construction of the Panama Canal, among many other projects. While most investigations of Chinese workers focus on migrant labor, Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochi…

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William Jennings, "Dibia's World: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation" (Liverpool UP, 2023) 47:14

6M ago47:14

47:14

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, Tarin Ahmed, the host, is joined by guest, William Jennings, a senior lecturer in French at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and author of Dibia's World.: Life on an Early Sugar Plantation (Liverpool UP, 2023). William discusses the importance of names, voice and the community life of a hundred …

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Marc Jaffré, "The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610-1643" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:02:08

6M ago1:02:08

1:02:08

Marc Jaffré joins Jana Byars for a lively conversation about The Courtiers and the Court of Louis XIII, 1610- 1643 (Oxford University Press, 2025). Louis XIII's court has long been a feature of the popular imaginary, thanks in part to the many movie and TV adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' novel The Three Musketeers. Yet it remains misunderstood, com…

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"I have not Finished...": Rokahya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP) 46:39

6M ago46:39

46:39

Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokahya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo within a transnational black intellectual tradition, founded in the interwar period in the Negritude movement; it was then that Paulette, Jeanne, and Anne…

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Reider Payne, "War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) 1:10:01

7M ago1:10:01

1:10:01

Though Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh remains well known today for his role in shaping the post-Napoleonic peace settlement in Europe, his half-brother Sir Charles Stewart has received far less attention despite his own prominent part in the politics and diplomacy of those years. In War and Diplomacy in the Napoleonic Era: Sir Charles Stewart…

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Max Hastings, “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975” (Harper, 2018) 53:18

7M ago53:18

53:18

People of various political stripes in many countries (particularly those countries where various political stripes are allowed) have been arguing about the Vietnam War for a long time. The participants in these debates were (and are) always quick to assign blame in what seems to be an endless attempt to justify “their side” and vilify “the other s…

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Les Sosnowski and Monique Sosnowski, "Operation Crevette: Benin, Mercenaries, and the Survival of a New State" (Lexington Books, 2024) 1:45:04

7M ago1:45:04

1:45:04

Freshly out from under French colonial rule in 1960, the West African nation of Dahomey (now Benin) became home to the largest number of coups d’état in history, earning the reputation of the “sick child of Africa.” Country politics eventually aligned with Marxist and socialist ideologies stimulating French opposition that resulted in mercenary int…

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Benjamin P. Davis, "Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics" (Edinburgh UP, 2023) 55:26

7M ago55:26

55:26

Benjamin P. Davis’s Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics (Edinburgh University Press 2025) provides one of the first readings, in English or French, of Édouard Glissant as an ethical theorist. What do we in the West owe those who grow our food, sew our clothes and produce our electronics? And what have we always…

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Bruce L. Vernarde, "The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France" (Cornell UP, 2024) 1:06:56

8M ago1:06:56

1:06:56

Murder in a cathedral, horrific illnesses and deformities, narrow escapes from injury and death, a vengeful dragon, a wandering eyeball, a bawdy monk and other sinners redeemed—the accounts of miracles performed by the Virgin Mary gathered and translated in The Miracles of Mary in Twelfth-Century France (Cornell UP, 2024) provide vivid glimpses int…

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Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, "The Age of Revolutions: And the Generations Who Made It" (Basic Books, 2024) 1:02:13

8M ago1:02:13

1:02:13

A panoramic new history of the revolutionary decades between 1760 and 1825, from North America and Europe to Haiti and Spanish America, showing how progress and reaction went hand in hand. The revolutions that raged across Europe and the Americas over seven decades, from 1760 to 1825, created the modern world. Revolutionaries shattered empires, top…

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Holly Grout, "Playing Cleopatra: Inventing the Female Celebrity in Third Republic France" (LSU Press, 2024) 46:59

8M ago46:59

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Questions about the meaning of womanhood and femininity loomed large in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French culture. In Playing Cleopatra: Inventing the Female Celebrity in Third Republic France (LSU Press, 2024), Dr. Holly Grout uses the theater—specifically, Parisian stage performances of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra by Sarah Bern…

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Andrew Janiak, "The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy" (Oxford UP, 2024) 47:27

8M ago47:27

47:27

The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford UP, 2024) introduces the work and legacy of philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet. As the Enlightenment gained momentum throughout Europe, Châtelet broke through the many barriers facing women at the time and published a major philosophical treatise in…

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Kirsten L. Scheid, "Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920–1950" (Indiana UP, 2022) 1:28:42

8M ago1:28:42

1:28:42

In Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920–1950 (Indiana UP, 2022), Kirsten L. Scheid offers a striking study of both modern art in Lebanon and modern Lebanon through art. By focusing on the careers of Moustapha Farrouk and Omar Onsi, forefathers of an iconic national repertoire, and their rebellious student Saloua Raouda Choucair, …

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Ethan Kleinberg, "Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn: Philosophy and Jewish Thought" (Stanford UP, 2021) 1:18:20

8M ago1:18:20

1:18:20

In this rich intellectual history of the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic lectures in Paris, Ethan Kleinberg addresses Levinas's Jewish life and its relation to his philosophical writings while making an argument for the role and importance of Levinas's Talmudic lessons. Pairing each chapter with a related Talmudic lecture, Kle…

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Deborah Reed-Donahay, "Sideways Migration: Being French in London" (Routledge, 2025) 30:10

8M ago30:10

30:10

Sideways Migration: Being French in London (Routledge, 2025) examines the relationship between migration and socioeconomic status. In particular, it charts a set of middle-class aspirations that lead people to move to a nearby nation that is similar in wealth and social indicators - a type of horizontal relocation that it terms "sideways migration.…