Mapping France
ASMCF conference, 6-8 September 2007
University of Reading
Deadline for proposals: 28 February 2006
Proposals are invited from French literary specialists, geographers, historians, political scientists, and sociologists, for the following panels, or for complementary panels within the same general theme.

A. France’s electoral geography
B. Militants des villes, militants des champs
C. The post-Jacobin state. The new map of local and regional power in France
D. La Courneuve is not France: the geographical diversity of immigrant experiences
E. War and geographical diversity in France
F. Tokenism or a foot in the door? Parity and territorial representation in France.
G. Religion and the shaping of French territory
H. Paris, the provinces and the media
I. Ville, banlieue, terroir: changing landscapes in contemporary French writing and chanson.
J. Mapping Postcolonial France
K. Towards a geography of French sport
No country in Europe boasts a greater geographical diversity than France. The contrast between a strong national identity, underpinned by a centralised state, and an infinite diversity of local situations waiting to be discovered and compared, is one of the delights that of studying it.
But the fact that ‘Paris is not France’ also presents the specialist of France with an obvious problem, more acute here than elsewhere: how can we be sure that what we know about ‘France’, based in the capital, corresponds to the thoughts and behaviour of Bretons or Alsaciens or Savoyards or Auvergnats? And how persistent, and consistent has the geographical diversity of the country been in an age when globalisation has diminished distance and difference between countries and continents, to say nothing of regions?
This conference will have the ambitious aim of mapping France’s geographical diversity in a variety of political, historical and cultural areas, in the hope not only of drawing participants into unknown but revealing byways, but also of producing, through a multidisciplinary approach, a sum that is greater than its parts.
The panels outlined above are intended as examples, and the list is not exhaustive:

The full version of this call for papers will be posted on the ASMCF website (http://www.asmcf.org/asmcf/conferences/conferences.htm#ASMCFconference2007).

All enquiries and proposals for panels and papers (abstract of 250 words) should be addressed, by 28 February 2007 at latest (and if at all possible, by 12 December 2006) to:

Professor Andrew Knapp
French Studies
School of Languages and European Studies
University of Reading
PO Box 218
Whiteknights
Reading
RG6 6AA

telephone +44 (0)118 3788120
fax +44 (0)118 3788122

e-mail a.f.knapp@reading.ac.uk