The Volunteers: A Family Romance of the French Revolution

Les Volontaires tells the extraordinary story and “family romance” of a young man who was raised to be Rousseau’s Emile, and of his philosophe adoptive mother and step sister–cum–future wife, through the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the early nineteenth century. Part micro-history, part social biography, this book explores ways and possibilities of writing a fragmentary history in a minor key.

The book's author, Thomas Dodman, will talk about his book with Carol Gluck, Mark Mazower, Emmanuelle Saada, and Joanna Stalnaker. This event is part of the New Books in the Arts and Sciences series.

Thomas Dodman is a historian of modern France and its empire, with a broad training in cultural and intellectual history, and interdisciplinary research and teaching interests in psychoanalysis, anthropology, political economy, and social theory. His work ranges widely, but typically explores social transformation in times of war and revolution, and through the study of emotions and medicine in particular. As director of the History and Literature (HiLi) MA at Columbia’s Global Center in Paris, he also probes the porous boundary between these two disciplines and forms of writing.

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