Ninth Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture in French History
The Society for the Study of French History
and
The Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France
and
Institut Français, Royaume-Uni
Present:
The Douglas Johnson Memorial Lecture,
Monday 14th January 2019.
Too hot to handle? Flora Tristan (1803-1844), campaigner for gender equality
Professor Máire Cross (Newcastle University)
Venue:
La Médiathèque, Institut Français, 17 Queensberry Place, South Kensington, London SW7 2DT
Tickets:
Tickets are available from the Institut Français website at the following link:
https://www.institut-francais.org.uk/events-calendar/whats-on/talks/flora-tristan-campaigner-for-gender-equality/
Flora Tristan was described in the contemporary English and Irish press reporting on France of the 1830s and 40s as an ‘authoress’, ‘female political economist’ and ‘agitator’. One of the first ever to combine a feminist and socialist programme, her 1843 publication Union Ouvrière outsold those of her contemporaries: Proudhon’s Qu’est-ce que la propriété? and Marx’s Manifeste communiste, but those better-known authors scarcely acknowledged her. Her books did not altogether vanish from circulation after her untimely death in 1844, but enough for political activists to refer to her subsequently as a ‘forgotten heroine’. Labelled as a ‘precursor’ to feminism and the ‘cousin of Marx’, her life and work were recorded in depth by a historian of early international socialism, Jules- L Puech and published in 1925. The lecture will explore efforts by activists and historians to recover the memory of Flora Tristan whose brief but intense political career in France illustrates a diverse approach redolent of campaigns of the twenty-first century.
Previous Lectures:
The First Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Julian Jackson (Queen Mary University of London), ‘The Century of Charles de Gaulle’ (November 2010).
[details and video/podcast of event]
The Second Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Professor Richard Thomson (Edinburgh University), ‘New Wine in Old Bottles: Adapting and Abusing Tradition in French Visual Culture, 1880-1910’ (January 2012).
[details and podcast of event]
The Third Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Professor Ruth Harris, (New College, Oxford), ‘Rolland, Gandhi and Madeleine Slade: Spiritual Politics, France and the Wider World’ (January 2013).
[details and podcast of event]
The Fourth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History, the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Professor Andrew Knapp, (University of Reading), ‘Bombing and Memory: Britain and France, 1940-1945’ (January 2014).
[details and podcast of event]
The Fifth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History, the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France and The Institute of Historical Research, London present:
Professor John Horne, (Trinity College Dublin), ‘Myth or Model? The French Revolution in the Great War’ (January 2015).
[details and podcast of event]
The Sixth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France present:
Professor Siân Reynolds, (University of Stirling), ‘Children of the Revolutionaries’ (January 2016).
[details of event]
The Seventh Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France present:
Professor Colin Jones (Queen Mary), ‘Rethinking Robespierre and the French Revolutionary Terror’ (January 2017).
[details of event]
The Eighth Douglas Johnson Annual Lecture:
The Society for the Study of French History and the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France present:
Professor Malcolm Crook (Keele), ‘How the British and French Learned to Vote’ (January 2018).
[details of event]