Herrick Chapman
Associate Professor of History, Institute of French Studies
Univ. of California, Berkeley, PhD 1983, MA 1977; Princeton, MPA 1972
Office Address:
Institute of French Studies, 15 Washington Mews
Email:
Phone:
212.998.8743
Field of Study:
Modern Europe
Areas of Research/Interest:
French history; social history; economic history; history of public policy
Curriculum Vitae
Bio
As a historian of modern France, I have written mainly on the relationship between economic change and the transformation of political culture in the context of the two world wars and the struggle over decolonization in the twentieth century. My first book, on the French aircraft industry, examined the internal dynamics of a politically turbulent industry from the Great Depression through the early Cold War. I am now finishing a book on the social and economic reconstruction of France after the Second World War with a focus on why government elites and a variety of social groups came to regard state authority in new ways during what I call the “long Liberation” from 1944 to 1962. This project makes comparisons across several areas of public policy--industrial renewal, family policy, immigration, taxation, and the regulation of the retail trade--where state intervention took controversial new forms. I also have an abiding interest in comparative history and work that examines France in a broader European, colonial, and trans-Atlantic context. In this spirit I have written on steel towns in the U.S. and Europe, have co-authored a textbook stressing inter-regional comparisons in Europe, and have co-edited books on democratization across the globe, on labor relations, and on “Race in France” as understood through French-American comparisons. My current research interests include issues of race and ethnicity, cultures of work, postwar state planning, and center-periphery dynamics in twentieth-century France. I also serve as the editor of the journal French Politics, Culture & Society.
Selected Works:
Books:
State Capitalism and Working-Class Radicalism in the French Aircraft Industry (University of California Press, 1991).
European Society in Upheaval: Social History Since 1700, Third Edition, co-authored with Peter N. Stearns (MacMillan, 1992).
Race in France: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference, co-edited with Laura L. Frader (Berghahn Books, 2004).
The Social Construction of Democracy, 1870-1990, co-edited with George Reid Andrews (New York University Press, 1995).
A Century of Organized Labor in France: A Union Movement for the Twenty-First Century? co-edited with Mark Kesselman and Martin Schain (St. Martin's Press, 1998).
Articles:
“The State,” in The French Republic, ed. Edward Berenson, Vincent Duclert and Christophe Prochasson. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.
“Choosing History, Discovering France,” in Why France: American Historians Reflect on Their Enduring Fascination, ed. Laura Lee Downs and Stéphane Gerson. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.
“Les petits commerçants et l’État de la révolte poujadiste au début de la Ve République,” in Les Petites et Moyennes Entreprises de 1880 à nos jours. Pouvoirs, representation, action, edited by Sylvie Guillaume and Michel Lescure. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008.
“France’s Liberation Era, 1944-47: A Social and Economic Settlement?” in Revisiting the Liberation, ed. Andrew Knapp. New York: Palgrave, 2007.
“Réformateurs et contestataires de l’impôt après la seconde guerre mondiale,” in L’impôt en France aux XIXe et XXe siècles, ed. Maurice Lévy-Leboyer, Michel Lescure et Alain Plessis. Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2006.
“The Liberation of France as a Moment in State-Making,” in Crisis and Renewal in Twentieth-Century France, ed. Martin S. Alexander and Kenneth Mouré. New York: Berghahn Books, 2002.
"Modernity and National Identity in Postwar France," French Historical Studies 22, 2 (Spring 1999).
