Recentering “Clio's Lost Tribe”

I arrived at New York University's Washington Mews, home of the Institute of French Studies (IFS), in the fall of 1996 with a master's in French language and literature. At the time, I had been trained to analyze objects of study (primarily texts and discourses) using the tools of close reading and critical theory, and I came to the IFS looking to shift my focus and practice to cultural history. I intended to examine how cultural products contributed to shifts in mentalities and to shaping social imaginaries. Relatedly, I wanted to investigate how everyday people produced and consumed culture, especially as this pertained to women's quotidian experiences in the postwar period. I was keen to assert the agency of the powerless, but through my graduate education I came to learn how to more carefully delineate the contours of that agency. Where I had once exclusively studied revolutionary discourses, such as those trumpeted in the 1970s feminist newsletter Le Torchon Brûle , under the intellectual tutelage of Herrick Chapman, I came to appreciate the need to ground my studies in empirical events, asking both the journalist's questions—who, what, when, where, and how?—along with that of the historian: do we see change or continuity over time? To my naïve surprise, my interests in women's history, everyday life, and the histoire des mentalités led me down the path of engagement with the French state, with the figure of the expert, and with, gasp, policy history. Did the Institute of French Studies turn me into a wonk?!