France on Display

Shanny Peer is Assistant Professor of French Studies at New York University.

"…an important contribution to the recent scholarly studies exploring the cultural and ideological functions of world's fairs … a fascinating and well-informed narrative … should therefore be necessary reading for scholars and students interested in twentieth-century France and issues of national identity in the contemporary world." — The French Review"The author uses the exposition of 1937 to explore several major historical issues. We learn how regionalism, the peasantry and folklore—the supposed essence of French tradition—were harmonized with modernity at the fair. We read how the Left, that is the Popular Front, managed to appropriate and reconfigure traditional symbols of collective representation that had been supposedly the prisoners of the Right. Peer shows us how the Popular Front, by trying to invigorate and 'nationalize' rural and regional life prefigured both Vichy and postwar renovation. She places the exposition's display in a longer historical context dating from the 1880s to the 1990s—ending with the controversy over the (supposed) threat posed by GATT to the peasantry and a French way of life." — Richard Kuisel, State University of New York, Stony Brook"This book gives the reader much more than simply a well-crafted account of the social, political, and cultural forces that made the 1937 Exposition. It also incisively explains their importance in the larger context of long-term French debates about national identity, rural life and folklore, regionalism and democracy. In sum, an important contribution." — Charles Rearick, University of Massachusetts at Amherst"This lively examination of some of the back-stage maneuvers and front-stage spectacles at the 1937 World's Fair provides a marvelous vantage point for a fresh look at ideas about the perils and promise of 'modernity.' Peer masterfully weaves together large questions and colorful details, timeless issues and the nitty-gritty of interwar French political and cultural history. This visit to the Parisian Fair with her will be stimulating both for students of contemporary French history and for social scientists interested in the variegated processes of creating national identities in the modern world." — Susan Carol Rogers, New York University

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: Shaping the Exposition Chapter Two: Unity in Diversity: The French Regions Chapter Three: Peasants in Paris: Images of Rural Society Chapter Four: Folklore and the Reinvention of Tradition Conclusion: France in the World of Tomorrow Notes Bibliography Index