A Chapmanian Paradigm

In fall 2022, more than forty current and former students, colleagues, interlocutors, and friends of Herrick Chapman gathered at New York University's Institute of French Studies to honor and reflect on his nearly thirty-year career at NYU as a scholar, teacher, and mentor. Long delayed due to Covid, the symposium—“France in the Twentieth Century: Mobilizing People, Power, and Ideas”—brought together the multiple cohorts Herrick has trained, on and off the tenure track, working within and beyond the university. An abiding sense of gratitude permeated the event: everyone wanted a chance to say what Herrick had done for them and meant to them. The roundtables accordingly combined the academic and the personal, as former students considered their own trajectories in light of Herrick's work on such themes as social movements and politics, the state and expertise, and empire and difference. If presenters’ career paths and intellectual preoccupations diverged widely, spanning France and the francophone world and grounded in social, cultural, and political approaches, a number of common threads emerged: the depth and rigor of Herrick's critique combined with the lightness of his touch; his remarkable ability to identify and articulate the stakes of a project or argument, no matter how far from his own wheelhouse; and the critical respect and consideration he paid to everyone, from nervous first-year doctoral students to late-stage dissertators as well as peers. We had all learned to trust our instincts as scholars and writers precisely because Herrick had.