Emily Marker - Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era

BLACK FRANCE, WHITE EUROPE

YOUTH, RACE, AND BELONGING IN THE POSTWAR ERA

E MILY M ARKER

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Ithaca and London

For my family

The research for and writing of this book would not have been possible without generous support from the Rutgers University Research Council; the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago; the Georges Lurcy Charitable and Educational Trust; and the Social Science Research Council/Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship.

Chapters of this book have benefited from the collective wisdom of participants at the Modern Europe Workshop at Indiana University Bloomington, the Beyond France Seminar at Columbia University, the Lees Seminar at Rutgers UniversityCamden, and the Philadelphia-area French History Group. Special thanks to Kelly Duke Bryant, Gregory Mann, and Judith Surkis for their thoughtful comments and detailed feedback on early chapter drafts.

I am deeply indebted to Emily Andrew, Durba Ghosh, Bethany Wasik, and the anonymous reviewers for Cornell University Press for their incisive critiques and perceptive suggestions. Richard Ivan Jobs, Semyon Khokhlov, and Sam Lebovic gave me generous, detailed feedback on the entire manuscript. This is a better book thanks to them.

The core idea for this book emerged from conversations with Leora Auslander more than a decade ago. From that initial spark to the finished product, Leora has helped me make sense of the chaos. Her unwavering belief in me and this project empowered me to think big and take risks. I am in awe of her intellect, generosity, and commitment to both her scholarly work and making the profession a more humane and equitable place than when she entered it. I am forever grateful to have her as a mentor and friend.

The conceptual repertoire and key arguments of this book developed dialogically with a wide circle of interlocutors at conferences, archives, and elsewhere. Thanks to Jennifer Boittin, Neilesh Bose, Sung Choi, Andrew M. Daily, Naomi Davidson, Muriam Haleh Davis, Jennifer Dixon, Flavio Eichmann, Charlotte Faucher, Darcie Fontaine, Elizabeth Foster, Elise Franklin, Harry Gamble, Adom Getachew, Burleigh Hendrickson, Rachel Kantrowitz, Suzanne Kaufman, Kathleen Keller, Emma Kuby, Daniel Lee, Etay Lotem, Stephanie Maher, Elizabeth Marcus, Larry McGrath, Eric OConnor, Roxanne Panchasi, Terrence Peterson, Erin Pettigrew, Christy Pichichero, Keith Rathbone, Louisa Rice, Julia Roos, Sandrine Sanos, and Emmanuelle Sibeud. Conversations with Laura Lee Downs, Carole Reynaud Paligot, and Michelle Zancarini-Fournel helped me refine earlier formulations of this project.

I have had the good fortune to work with inspirational mentors, scholars, and peers. Special thanks to Mark Bradley, Alice Conklin, Michael Geyer, Jan Goldstein, and Emily Lynn Osborn. I am particularly grateful for the intellectual fellowship and camaraderie of Emily Lord Fransee, Michael Kozakowski, Celeste Day Moore, Eleanor Rivera, and Jake P. Smith, as well as Jacob Betz, Brett Brehm, Christopher Dingwall, Madeleine Elfenbein, Susannah Engstrom, Dara Epison, Darryl Heller, Ke-chin Hsia, Amanda Michelle Jones, Elisa Jones, Ari Joskowicz, Ainsley LeSure, Cam McDonald, Sarah Miller-Davenport, Katya Motyl, Tessa Murphy, Becca Schlossberg, Diana Lynn Schwartz, Guo-Quan Seng, Caroline Squin, Peter Simons, Lauren Stokes, Gwynneth Troyer, Erika Vauss, and Fei-hsien Wang. I am deeply indebted to S bastien Greppo, director of the University of Chicago Center in Paris, for his unwavering support while I was in the field.

I am so fortunate to have been a part of the intellectual communities at Rutgers-Camden, Rutgers Center for African Studies, and Rutgers Center for European Studies. Thanks to all my Rutgers colleagues, and also to Sharon Smith for her administrative support and to Ana s Faurt and Ariel Mond, two outstanding PhD students at Rutgers-New Brunswick, for their invaluable research assistance in the final stages of preparing the manuscript.

Thanks to my friends in ParisEmily Bosch, Baptiste Fabre, Cormac Flynn, Sunayana Ganguly, Pascaline Lefebvre, David Lewis, Adam McBride-Smith, Meghna Prakash, Samantha Rajasingham, and Corentin Seznecfor hosting me, keeping me company, listening to me talk about this project, and making me want to come back to France, year after year.

Thanks, too, to friends in Philly and New York who saw me through the last leg of writing this book: Caren Beilin, Rachel Bobrick, Megan Brown, Jake Collins, Jean-Paul Cauvin, Katherine Clark, Mikkel Dach, Cassandra Fiore, Evan Few, Isabel Gabel, Michael Garber, Colin Hartz, Ruth Judge, Nabil Kashyap, Kinohi Nishikawa, Eileen Ryan, Victoria Sacks, David Suisman, Naomi Taback, and B. Trent Williams. I am also infinitely grateful to Relebohile Letsie, whose support was invaluable as I revised the manuscript.

Finally, thanks to my family, for their boundless love, patience, and compassion. To Jim and Marjorie Marker, Kate Walsh, Semyon Khokhlov and Cecilia Semyonovna Khokhlova Markerthis book is for you.