Please join us Sunday, March 29 at 5pm at the National Humanities Center for our next seminar meeting. Jennifer Boittin, Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of Global History at UNC Chapel Hill, will be discussing her new book project, Transience: Twentieth-Century Politics of Precarity in French and Francophone Ports and Waterways.
In Jennifer’s words, Transience “proposes a twentieth-century cultural and social history of French and French imperial ports and their bordering waterways” to “examine how people shaped ports’ economic, political, intellectual, and ecological systems, revealing how the tension between global commerce and human precarity made transience a defining feature of port cities.”
Jennifer is sharing a draft overview of the book project, along with a copy of a recently published essay that inspired it (“The lives and politics of African migrants in twentieth-century France: From vagabonds and transients to maritime labourers and intellectuals,” in Routledge Handbook of Francophone Africa, edited by Tony Chafer and Margaret A. Majumdar, 257-73. Routledge, 2023). She notes, “I am interested in any feedback on the two individual documents, but also very interested in your feedback, suggestions, or ideas regarding the overarching book project in relation to the chapter I am sharing.”
The materials for discussion are currently available in a single PDF document on the password-protected Papers page of this website. Please contact a co-convener for this month’s password.
A remote attendance option is also offered for this meeting. Please contact a co-convener for the Zoom link