Anne-Marie Lugan Dardigna

Women of Literary Salon Feminism and the Literary Salon: Women in 18th-Century France

In France, the struggle for women’s rights is a very ancient one. In the 17th and 18th centuries it found expression in literary salons led by such famous figures as Madame de Tencin, Madame du Deffant, Madame Geoffrin and later by Madame du Châtelet and Madame d’Epinay.

Sylvie Schweitzer

Women Have Always Worked A History of Working Women in the 19th Century

For women, the victory of recent years is one of empowerment in their professional lives: they now have the means to compete with men in every field. Yet society’s traditional image of what is a male or female profession remains very powerful. In 2001, French women had managed to enter professions that were previously practically closed to them but French men are still reluctant to enter traditionally female professions. This book reviews two centuries of women’s work. It shows that women have always worked — but not everywhere. Women’s access to increasingly “prized” jobs goes hand in hand with economic and global development.

François Godement

Whither China?

A fascinating inquiry into the core of Chinese political life, by an eminent expert on China.

Emanuela Guidoboni, Jean-Paul Poirier

When the Earth Shook

Yves Pouliquen

When the Académie Française almost Disappeared From the French Revolution to the Empire

The history of the Académie Française under the Revolution and the Empire

Anthony Rowley, Fabrice d'Almeida

When History Captures Our Emotions

the authors recount 20 stories that made history and that reveal the role played by the emotions over the centuries

Catherine Bertho Lavenir

The Wheel and the Pen: How We Became Tourists

Marie-Jo Bonnet

What Does a Woman Desire when She Desires a Woman?

The desire of women for their own sex is a subject that has been concealed and heavily censored since Antiquity. Yet it has constantly resurfaced throughout history - despite repression, denial and today's feigned indifference - and its existence is a historical and anthropological fact, whatever the dominant opinion may say. Marie-Jo Bonnet argues that lesbianism transgresses social norms and female stereotypes, and breaks with the phallic model and the restricted social role that is assigned to women even today. She sees lesbian desire as a radical instrument of emancipation and offers an original analysis of the women's liberation movement, of recent discussions about homosexuality and, finally, of the persistence of lesbophobia. Desire, regardless of its subject, is always a unique and complex experience, and Bonnet does not ignore this fact. In an original, wide-ranging study of lesbian love through literature, she delves into the work of such major writers of the past as Marguerite Yourcenar, Violette Leduc, Simone de Beauvoir, Djuna Barnes and, surprisingly, Madame de Sévigné, as well as of more recent writers such as Monique Wittig, Anne Garreta and Christine Angot. The author's thesis is that women's desire for their own sex can serve as a tool to empower them to conquer their own space of creativity and liberation. Marie-Jo Bonnet, a writer and historian, is the author of Les Relations Amoureuses Entre Femmes (XVIe-XXe siècle).