Scholars across disciplines on both sides of the Atlantic have recently begun to open up, as never before, the scholarly study of race and racism in France. These original essays bring together in one volume new work in history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and legal studies. Each of the eleven articles presents fresh research on the tension between a republican tradition in France that has long denied the legitimacy of acknowledging racial difference and a lived reality in which racial prejudice shaped popular views about foreigners, Jews, immigrants, and colonial people. Several authors also examine efforts to combat racism since the 1970s.

"Herrick Chapman and Laura Frader have done a wonderful job of bringing together a wide range of pathbreaking essays on the topic of race in France, giving a new perspective on what it means to be French in the modern and contemporary era." - Journal of Modern History Scholars across disciplines on both sides of the Atlantic have recently begun to open up, as never before, the scholarly study of race and racism in France. These original essays bring together in one volume new work in history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and legal studies. Each of the eleven articles presents fresh research on the tension between a republican tradition in France that has long denied the legitimacy of acknowledging racial difference and a lived reality in which racial prejudice shaped popular views about foreigners, Jews, immigrants, and colonial people. Several authors also examine efforts to combat racism since the 1970s. Herrick Chapman is Associate Professor of History and French Studies at New York University. The author and editor of several books on French and European social history, he also edits the multidisciplinary journal French Politics, Culture & Society. Laura L. Frader specializes in French social and labor history and European women's and gender history and has written extensively on these topics. In addition to her position as Chair of the Department of History at Northeastern University, she is a Senior Associate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University.

Gender figured significantly in the industrial, social, and political transformations of the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Germany, and Russia. This book explores its importance during a period of radical change for the working classes, from 1800 through the 1930s. Collectively, the authors demonstrate how the study of gender can lead to a new understanding of working class history. The authors-leading historians, sociologists, and feminist scholars ask how gender meanings and relations shaped and were shaped by transformations in areas ranging from the Irish linen industry to German social policy, from the French labor movement to Britain's interracial settlements. With special attention to the importance of language and culture in social life, they show how political identities are constituted and social categories created, contested, and changed-and how gender plays a central role in this process. Contributors: Kathleen Canning, University of Michigan; Helen Harden Chenut, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Anna Clark, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Judy Coffin, University of Texas, Austin; Jane Gray, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Republic ofireland; Tessie P. Llu, Northwestern University; Judith F. Stone, Western Michigan University; Laura Tabili, University of Arizona; Eric D. Weitz, St. Olaf College; Elizabeth A. Wood, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.