NYU Institute of French Studies

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NYU Institute of French Studies

Located in New York City, the IFS is a leading center for the study of France/the Francophone world

At the IFS, historians and social scientists explore French politics, society and culture in a global context. Our graduate seminars introduce master-degree students to the human sciences and PhD candidates to disciplinary knowledge and multidisciplinary points of view. Through public programs, we help keep New Yorkers informed about contemporary France and its connections to the US, Europe and the wider world.

04/13/2026

Meet Olivier Wieviorka, our second visiting professor for the spring semester! A faculty member at École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, Professor Wieviorka is a leading French historian specializing in the history of World War II and the French Resistance. His work explores the conflict not only through military events, but also through its political, social, and cultural dimensions. His books published in English include Normandy. The Landings to the Liberation of Paris (2008), Orphans of the Republic? The Nation's Legislators in Vichy France (2009), The French Resistance (2016), and The Resistance in Western Europe. 1940–1945 (2019).

Olivier’s course, Histoire Totale de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, examines World War II as more than a sequence of battles. This seminar situates military history within broader global, economic, and societal contexts, exploring experiences of occupation, dictatorship, and resistance across both Europe and Asia. The course also challenges widely held assumptions about the war, encouraging students to rethink key narratives and better understand how this global conflict continues to shape the present.

It is a pleasure to welcome Olivier to campus this spring!

04/10/2026

Next week, the IFS invites you to join us on Wednesday, April 15th (tax day!) for a public event with French economist Gabriel Zucman. Zucman will discuss his proposal for a 2% wealth tax on fortunes exceeding a hundred million euros and its reception in the French public debate and political arena. This proposal is presented in his latest book, “Les milliardaires ne paient pas d’impôts sur le revenu et nous allons y mettre fin” (Seuil, 2025).

Speaker: Gabriel Zucman is a Professor of Economics at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the Paris School of Economics, and the University of California, Berkeley. The founding director of the EU Tax Observatory, he has co-authored (with Emmanuel Saez) “The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay” (Norton, 2019). His research focuses on the accumulation, distribution, and taxation of global wealth and analyzes the macro-distributional implications of globalization. In 2023, Zucman received the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association.

The event will be moderated by Audrey Célestine, Associate Professor of History and French Studies, NYU.

RSVP via the link in our bio !

03/27/2026

NEXT THURSDAY, April 2nd: World War II has left a lasting impact on the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Eighty years after the end of the war, we ought to revisit its meaning by asking important questions: Was WWII truly a world war? To what extent was it a modern conflict? Should we view it as an ideological conflict, or rather as a mere opposition between fierce nationalisms?

Olivier Wieviorka, a leading expert on the war’s multiple dimensions, will address these and other questions in a far-ranging talk. In English.

Speaker: A Professor of History at the ENS Paris-Saclay, Olivier Wieviorka is among France’s leading scholars of the Second World War and is the current Visiting Professor at the IFS. He is the author of books on, among other topics, the resistance in wartime Europe, the Normandy landings, the liberation of France, and memories of the Second World War. He recently published La France libérée: Victoire, renouveaux, espoirs (La Martiniere, 2025).

RSVP via the link in our bio !

03/18/2026

Jacques Revel, one of the great historians of the past few decades, passed away on March 13, 2026. He was 83.

Revel was a specialist of France’s Ancien Régime, but his erudition knew no temporal bounds. He wrote brilliantly about micro-history and also about history scaled in various ways, its aperture both narrow and wide. He knew more than almost anyone about the political uses of history and about historiography in general, not just of his native France, but also of the United States, Germany, and Italy. He contributed major essays to Pierre Nora’s monumental Lieux de Mémoire (translated as Realms of Memory), a study of how the French have enshrined their history and memory in geographical places, buildings, institutions, religion, school curricula, and many other things.

Beyond his own books and articles, Revel was a great facilitator of other scholars’ work. As president of France’s prestigious, multidisciplinary Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (1995-2004), he nurtured the research and publications of historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, among
others. In doing so, he built handsomely on what his predecessors, among them François Furet, had done to communicate knowledge to generations of students in what the French call the “human sciences.”

Revel was a great traveler familiar with many countries and cultures, but he had a particular interest in the United States, even a fondness for the US, warts and all. He spent a lot of time here, and at NYU we took advantage of his fascination with New York City.

The founders of the Institute of French Studies, Tom Bishop, Michel Beaujour, and Nick Wahl, invited him to teach at the IFS early on, and he became a great friend and steadfast supporter of our work. He also forged tight connections to the NYU history department and as a Distinguished Global Visiting Professor taught graduate courses for us every spring for a decade.

He was just as committed to our students as to his own. Evan Spritzer, who earned a PhD in history and French Studies in 2015, wrote, Revel’s “class changed me. The beauty of his verb, the depth of his scholarship, and his role as avatar of Pierre Nora’s memory/history project have stayed with me since 2009.” It profoundly shaped Evan’s scholarship and teaching, not just because of Jacques’ intellectual example, but because he “was always warm and encouraging.”

Many of us at NYU were privileged to work with Jacques Revel, and we will miss him profoundly.

-Ed Berenson,
Director

03/06/2026

Join us next Wednesday, March 11, for a discussion around s*x, love, conjugality, and desire across the color line. The scholars who will be participating in this roundtable are contributors to a special issue of the IFS Journal (French Politics, Culture & Society) that provides a granular account of in*******al intimacy in France and the French Empire, bridging the colonial and postcolonial and drawing comparisons to other empires.

Their articles range from slavery in the Atlantic and Pacific worlds and the legal regulation of métissage, to the enforcement of racial boundaries among colonial soldiers and German women in the occupied Rhineland after the First World War.

More broadly, Professors Camiscioli, Séquin, and Boonstra will reflect on the place of gender, race, and colonialism in French Studies today.

Visit the link in our bio to RSVP today!

03/04/2026

With spring around the corner and the prospect of warmer days ahead, the IFS is pleased to invite you to the remainder of our lineup of public events.

Our spring program will include a film screening on writer Claude McKay, a panel around historian Thomas Dodman’s new book, a conversation with prominent economist Gabriel Zucman about taxation and justice in France today— and more! Visit our website via the link in our bio to read each event’s description and RSVP today.

Au plaisir de vous accueillir bientôt !

02/12/2026

Are you an NYU undergrad interested in the French and Francophone world ? Have your undergraduate studies or time at NYU Paris inspired you to delve deeper into the social sciences? If so, consider applying to the BA/MA program at NYU’s Institute of French Studies by March 11th!

Undergraduates with majors housed in have the opportunity to obtain an MA from with just one additional year of studies.

Going into your senior year, you can start taking graduate courses on the idyllic Washington Mews this fall. Better yet, once you are matriculated into GSAS you will be eligible for 50% tuition remission!

To learn more, join us for our open house on Friday, February 27th (RSVP in bio) or contact our Graduate Student Affairs Coordinator (email on last slide)

01/29/2026

Un grand merci to all who braved the cold last night for our event! We hope you will join us for the final installment of our Conversations with Vinciane Despret series next Tuesday, February 3rd, at 6:30 pm—you won’t want to miss it!

The final roundtable will focus on the concept of “fabulation” and the power of storytelling to imagine new futures. From Aesop and La Fontaine to Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Donna Haraway, and Saidiya Hartman, the tradition of fabulation reveals how stories cross boundaries, create collective voices, and shape both personal and political life. Bringing together writers, philosophers, and artists, the discussion will explore fabulation as a tool for invention and, often, for resistance, highlighting its radical potential in contemporary thought and creative practice.

*in French *

You can RSVP via the linktree in our bio!

01/23/2026

NEXT WEEK: Conversation 2 with Vinciane Despret🦜 “The dead are resurrected. They commit to recreating the past in the present.” In Au bonheur des morts et d’autres écrits (The Happiness of the Dead and Other Writings), Vinciane Despret outlines new ways of being and writing with people for whom death does not necessarily mean absence. Drawing from their own work and their own grief, three speakers will join her to discuss how the dead move us to act, how we respond to their invitations, and how, through stories and narrative matrices, we thicken and deepen, we amplify and prolong their own lives.

RSVP via the link in our bio !

01/14/2026

The IFS, La Maison Française, and the Department of French Literature, Though & Culture are pleased to invite you to our first event series of the spring semester: Conversations with Vinciane Despret. A philosopher and psychologist from Belgium, Despret has dedicated her scholarship to ethology, focusing primarily on what it means for animals to observe/be observed within scientific research. Over the course of three roundtables, Vinciane will be joined by NYU PhD students and scholars to discuss topics including animals and non-human behavior, writing about absence and death, and the power of narrative.

The first event will take place next Wednesday, January 21st, at 6:30pm at La Maison Française. RSVPs to each session can be found in our LinkTree along with more information. We look forward to seeing you there!

12/10/2025

This week we are highlighting our Alumna, Anne Hollumer, to congratulate her on her new role as the Executive Director of the Saratoga County History Center ()

Anne Hollmuller’s dissertation Le Grand Retour: The Politics of Cultural Restitution in France, 1993-2022, examined the history and future of French museum collections acquired during the colonial era. In her new role, Anne manages daily operations, plans and executes public programming, and leads a team of staff and volunteers in concert with their Board of Trustees. She most enjoys the opportunity to host history events that activate community histories, like those related to Saratoga Springs, the Saratoga National Historical Park, and the Battles of Saratoga. When asked about her time at the IFS and its impact on her career, she responded, “My experiences building a network, learning from mentors, and planning events have proved invaluable. Completing an Advanced Certificate in Public History and the associated coursework allowed me to think deeply about the problems facing historical organizations. Serving as a Public Humanities Doctoral Fellow at the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation taught me about how museum leaders plan for and respond to different events and opportunities. Grant writing as a doctoral student prepared me for grant writing as a nonprofit leader. The list goes on and on!”
Félicitations, Anne!

Address

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New York, NY
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Website

https://as.nyu.edu/ifs.html, http://linktr.ee/nyuinstituteoffrenchstudies

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