WORKSHOP AIMS
This one-day workshop will provide an important forum for the comparative study of revolutions in the modern world, from the first French Revolution of 1789-1799 through to the Arab Spring and elsewhere in the present day. A group of leading specialists on the French Revolutionary era (in both France and Ireland) will be joined by experts on the nineteenth and twentieth-century revolutionary tradition in France, as well as two scholars of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern politics and culture. The organisers very much hope that the audience itself will also include people with specialisms and interests well beyond France itself. As a result, the workshop will be able to provide extremely wide-ranging discussion and debate about the complex dynamics of revolution – a subject that has never been more in need of broad, collaborative and comparative inquiry than in the world we live in today.
ATTENDANCE:
Attendance at this workshop is free, but places are limited so please book early to avoid disappointment. A travel fund, courtesy of generous funding by the Society for the Study of French History, is available for postgraduate students – but again, those interested are encouraged to apply early. All enquiries should be directed to Alex Fairfax-Cholmeley (alex.fairfax-cholmeley@qmul.ac.uk).
WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
9.00-9.30: Registration. Tea/coffee and light breakfast
9.30-10.05
DOCUMENT DISCUSSION SESSION (with selection of material from the JRL collection on display at the workshop) - How can revolution be controlled? Using the example of print in France, 1789-1871. Led by Dr Alex Fairfax-Cholmeley (Queen Mary, University of London)
10.05-11.20
PANEL I: VIOLENCE (15 minute papers, plus 30 minutes’ discussion)
Professor David Andress (University of Portsmouth)
- Perceptions of collective violence in the French Revolution: participants, contemporary observers and historians
Professor Donald Sutherland (University of Maryland)
- Justice from below: a comparison of murder in Toulon and Douai in 1792
Dr Nelida Fuccaro (SOAS)
- Cities and Revolutions in the 20th-century Middle East
11.20-11.40: Tea/coffee break
11.40-12.25
KEYNOTE PAPER (30 minute paper, plus 15 minutes’ discussion)
Professor Colin Jones (Queen Mary, University of London)
- The French Revolution: the challenge of the journée
12.25-13.10: Lunch
13.10-14.25
PANEL II: COMMUNICATION (15 minute papers, plus 30 minutes’ discussion)
Dr Charles Walton (University of Warwick)
- Redistributive politics in the French and Egyptian Revolutions
Professor Bertrand Taithe (University of Manchester)
- The rhetoric of revolutionary authority in 1870-1871 (with reference to the JRL's broadside collection)
Dr Dalia Mostafa (University of Manchester)
- Protest culture and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution
14.25-14.30: Panel break
14.30-15.45
PANEL III: CONTROL (15 minute papers, plus 30 minutes’ discussion)
Dr Anne Simonin (Maison Française d'Oxford)
- How to keep violence at bay during the French Revolution: the notion of ‘public order’ in the Baudouin collection
Dr Ultán Gillen (Teeside University)
- Defeating revolution in 1790s Ireland
Dr Daniel Gordon (Edge Hill University)
- Talking Out of Revolution: Jacques Chirac and Henri Krasucki's Secret Pigalle Negotiations in May 1968
15.45-16.00: Tea/coffee break
16.00-16.30
Roundtable
