Does North America Exist?

Wednesday, June 4

02:00 - 05:00 PM: Session 1 - International Perspectives on North American Studies
Coordinators: Elsa Devienne (Ph.D. student), Thomas Grillot (researcher), Paul Schor (associate professor)

North American studies have so far been marginal in France, especially when compared to the massive body of literature produced every year in the United States. This reality prompted the members of the CENA to reflect on the very object of their research, whether in the collective book Chantiers d’histoire américaine (1994), the AMNOR project on the history of North American studies in France, or, more recently the European undertaking Historians Across Borders (2014). Looking back on thirty years of research, two evolutions seem obvious. CENA members have mostly focused their research on the US. This raises the question of the relative weight of the histories and historiographies of the US and Canada. What place does the category “North America” hold in our research? Can we look across and beyond national boundaries to better account for its continental dimension? Moreover, while North-American studies scholars in France used to collaborate mostly with their American or Canadian counterparts, they are now in close dialogue with other European researchers working on similar topics. How will this affect the field of North-American studies in Europe? How is the North American history produced in Europe different from the literature coming from other continents?

02:00 - 03:20 PM: Does North America Exist?
Chair: Jacques Portes, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, CENA/Mondes Américains
Catherine Desbarats and Allan Greer, McGill University: “North America from the Top Down: Visions of New France”
Pekka Hämäläinen, Oxford University: “Among Empires: Sovereignty, Power, and Space in the American Southwest and Northern Mexico before 1870”
Discussant: Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis