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The French Sense of Time and Space

We are now back from the period known in France as les vacances scolaires when everything, for anyone with (or even randomnly associated with) school age children stops dead. Being extremely organized, school holidays in France are all taken at the same time depending...

The Weight of History

This past Wednesday and Thursday, the Commission Franco-Américain brought together all the American Fulbrights and Chateaubriand Fellows working and studying in France so that we could learn about each other’s work, and share our research and our perspectives. The...

French University Life — or, plus ca change. . . .

The past two weeks I took the train (RER) from Paris to Cergy-Pontoise where I will be teaching. Cergy is a new university, just celebrating it’s 20th year, that is located outside of the city. The suburban campus has the advantage of providing a more...

Alexis de Tocqueville

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville set sail for America with his friend and traveling companion Gustave de Beaumont. The voyage by sea from Le Havre in France to Newport, Rhode Island took 37 days, and he and Beaumont would spend the next nine months traveling through...