France in America
I continue to believe that national histories have a place in the university curriculum alongside courses on transnational themes, Western civilization, and world history. Indeed, they provide essential training in the historical depth and perspective needed for teaching and learning at other levels. In addition to teaching such broadly based courses as Western civilization or world history, a historian might offer, for example, a course entitled Autobiography and History (with a focus on French figures), Anthropology and History, or France in America—to name three I have given over the years in addition to those in my specialty, modern French history. So, how should the French historian tailor his or her expertise to meet a wider topical, temporal, and geographic scope without simply using French history as a case study to make a generalization already established in a more general course or to identify French variations to broad transnational historical issues (i.e., race, class, gender, religion, family, economic development, political change, or cultural mutation)? In this essay I will argue that we can devise a course that contributes to many of these transnational issues without being misled by our knowledge of French history into expecting certain preconceived responses and outcomes. Throughout, the goal should be to demonstrate over a wide range of issues how a new environment challenged and transformed the received wisdom and customary behavior of people born and raised in France. When I first thought about French encounters outside the metropole, I was convinced that ‘‘Frenchness’’ would remain strong and that