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This volume presents the intellectual autobiographies of fourteen leading scholars in the fields of history, literature, film and cultural studies who have dedicated a considerable part of their career to researching the history and memories of France during the Second World War. Based in five different countries, Margaret Atack, Marc Dambre, Laurent Douzou, Hilary Footitt, Robert Gildea, Richard J. Golsan, Bertram M. Gordon, Christopher Lloyd, Colin Nettelbeck, Denis Peschanski, Renée Poznanski, Henry Rousso, Peter Tame, and Susan Rubin Suleiman have played a crucial role in shaping and reshaping what has become a thought-provoking field of research. This volume, which also includes an interview with historian Robert O. Paxton, clarifies the rationales and driving forces behind their work and thus behind our current understanding of one of the darkest and most vividly remembered pages of history in contemporary France.

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Part 1: Opening Reflections.- 1.Introduction: Ego-histories, France and the Second World War; Manuel Bragan‡a & Fransiska Louwagie.- 2.Interview with Robert O. Paxton, on the writing of history and ego-history; Robert O. Paxton with Manuel Bragan‡a & Fransiska Louwagie.- Part 2: Voices from France.- 3.Currents and Counter-currents; Marc Dambre.- 4.Resisting Fragments; Laurent Douzou.- 5. From a foreign country; Henry Rousso.- 6. On Chance and Necessity; Denis Peschanski.- Part 3: Voices across the Channel.- 7. In the Forests of the Night: England, France and the Writing of War; Margaret Atack.- 8. Searching for ´Contact Zones´ in France´s war; Hilary Footitt.- 9.A tale of two Frances and a curious ancestor; Robert Gildea.- 10.Vichy, Kingdom of Shadows; Christopher Lloyd.- 11.Writers in conflict; Peter Tame.- Part 4: Voices from far and near.- 12.Good Fortune, Good Friends; Richard J. Golsan.- 13. The Other Side: Investigating the Collaborationists in World War II France; Bertram M. Gordon.- 14.When faced with the question; Colin Nettelbeck.- 15.Born in Paris...; Renée Poznanski.- 16.Reaching Vichy via Budapest: On Zigzags, Waves and Triangles in Intellectual Life; Susan Rubin Suleiman.- Part 5: Closing Reflections.- 17. Conclusion: cross-perspectives on ego-history; Manuel Bragan‡a & Fransiska Louwagie.- Index

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Manuel Bragan‡a is Assistant Professor in French Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at University College Dublin, Ireland, where he is also a member of the Centre for War Studies and of the Humanities Institute. His research interests focus on the historiography and memories of the Second World War in France and Europe. He is an editor of the online research platform H-France and an assistant editor of the journal Open Cultural Studies.
Fransiska Louwagie is Lecturer in French Studies in the School of Arts at the University of Leicester, UK, where she is also affiliated with the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Her main research focus is on Holocaust testimony and post-Holocaust literature in French. She has co-edited, with Anny Dayan Rosenman, Un ciel de sang et de cendres. Piotr Rawicz et la solitude du témoin (2013) and, with Kirsten Malmkj‘r and Adriana Serban, Key Cultural Texts in Translation (2018).

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