Todd Shepard

Associate Professor

The Johns Hopkins University
Department of History
2850 North Charles Street
Baltimore MD 21218


Telephone: 410-516-7586
E-mail: tshep75@jhu.edu
Dell House 1401B
Office hours: Mondays, 1-2 p.m., and by appointment

Curriculum Vitae

My scholarship explores 20th-century France and the French Empire, with a focus on how imperialism intersects with histories of national identity, state institutions, race, and sexuality; my studies and teaching have concentrated on modern European history (particularly France), modern colonialism, and the history of sexuality.

My first book, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (2006), is a history of the close of the Algerian War and the difficult re-negotiation of French state structures and national identity that resulted. It was awarded both the American Historical Association's 2006 J. Russell Major Prize and the Council of European Studies' 2008 Book Prize (for best first book in European studies published in 2006-2007). 1962. Comment l’indépendance algérienne a transformé la France (2008) is a revised and updated French translation.

Like my first book, my two current projects use analyses drawn from cultural history to understand the formative role of law and state institutions. Each relies on a transnational lens to examine how the French grappled with their relationship to Muslim "Arabs." "Affirmative Action and Empire: 'Integration' in France (1956-1962) and the Race Question in the Cold War World" examines how the Algerian Revolution led the French Republic to put in place a pioneering range of programs to redress the effects of discrimination on its "Muslim Algerian" minority. I focus on how Mexican and Soviet antecedents as well as ongoing official US responses to the Civil Rights Movement directly shaped these French policies. The larger goal is to map how transnational currents of post-fascist anti-racism and anti-colonial militancy shaped the history of the late twentieth-century West.

My other project, "Arab Men and French Masculinity: Race and Sexuality in Post-colonial France," explores how representations of male homosexuality acquired importance and functioned in political arguments after 1945. This investigation of accusations and celebrations of male "perversion" maps changing understandings of gender and race in post-Algerian France.

Syllabi:

Undergraduate Courses:

Fall 2008: Race and Empire-Syllabus

Spring 2009: History of France since 1945-Syllabus

Fall 2009: History of Occidental Civilization, II-Syllabus

Graduate Seminars

Fall 2008: Empires and Decolonizations in Continental European Historiographies-Syllabus

Spring 2009: Modern European Imperialism and the History of Sex and Sexuality-Syllabus

Fall 2009: History and Recent Historiography of 19th-century France-Syllabus

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