How 1917 Changed the World: Commemorating the American Entry into the Great War

The French World War I Centennial Commission and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy have organized the visit of several prominent French scholars to the US. We are delighted to participate in this "roadshow" and to host two French historians at Boston University this November: Emmanuelle Cronier and Clémentine Vidal-Naquet. The visitors take part in a panel discussion with Prof. William Keylor (History and International Relations) and Prof. Cathal Nolan (History). Emmanuelle Cronier is a lecturer in contemporary history at the University of Picardie - Jules Verne. In her doctoral research on leave and soldiers on leave in Paris during the First World War, she adopted a holistic approach to First World War societies, adressing issues such as combatants' morale, social and family bonds, identities and wartime moral hierarchies, or the transgressive behaviors of the soldiers. She is currently working on First World War as a multicultural experience, exploring in particular food traditions as a support for morale among uprooted soldiers, and cross-cultural food issues. Clémentine Vidal-Naquet is author of COUPLES IN THE GREAT WAR: THE TRAGIC AND THE ORDINARY CONJUGAL BOND. The book studies the transformation of the conjugal bond during the Great War, due to the separation imposed by the general mobilization. Vidal-Naquet questions the repercussions of war in the intimate sphere by taking couples, married or not, as objects of study. In France, the site chosen for study, during the four years of war, the separation was experienced by at least five million couples. The book analyzes an experience eminently intimate but widely shared at the collective level. This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Europe, the International History Institute, and the Association Francophone de Boston University (AFBU).