Gathering sources to help you teach French history to English-speaking students can be a bit stressful – so why not pull some of our sources and tips together and create some accessible source indexes? Other disciplines have done it – German historians have a rich collection of documents, for instance – and with the increased digitisation of sources, or the collaboration of scholars interested in translation, it is becoming more and more likely that we will be having more and more access to sources accessible to French and non-French speakers.
In January 2017, several early career historians got together at the IHR to discuss ‘Research and Teaching in French History’. Chris Millington (Swansea) had organised a day where we could discuss recent projects and historiographical advances in the field, but also how our research and teaching intersected. The final roundtable, led by Andrew Smith (Chichester), begged questions about how French historians approach their topics and sources in the classroom. Some rely on cartoons and images; others do some translation; many have a growing repertoire of useful published sources.
This blog series aims to pool some of these ideas together. We’ll start off with some online sources for those teaching the 18th & 19th centuries, the French Revolution and the Second World War, and we will add in some broader websites about European history, with maps and images a plenty.
And most importantly: if you wish to contribute to this series, email us!!
