Laird Boswell

Laird Boswell

Emeritus Professor

lboswell@wisc.edu

608.263.1805

Office: 5127 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5016 Mosse Humanities
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Laird Boswell

Biography

Biography

I’m a historian of Modern Europe, especially France, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My teaching and research interests have focused largely on society and politics – ranging from the transformations of rural society, to the history of European socialism and communism, the history of nationalism, voter behavior and, more recently, the contemporary extreme right. I have also undertaken extensive work in quantitative and oral history. I wrote my first book on peasant communism in France and am now completing a study that uses the border region of Alsace and Lorraine to discuss changing conceptions of national belonging in twentieth century France. In addition to my work in the History department, I have directed the University of Wisconsin Center for European Studies and have served as director of the UW study abroad program in Aix-en-Provence, France. I also work with student in the Professional French Masters Program interested in contemporary French politics and society (immigration, social movements, European affairs).

My research interests are: Modern European Social and Political; Modern France; Nationalism & border regions; Socialism and communism; the extreme right; history of rural societies & voter behavior.

Education

Ph.D., University of California – Berkeley
M.A., University of California – Berkeley
B.A., Hampshire College

Books

Rural Communism in France, 1920-1939

Laird Boswell. Rural Communism in France, 1920-1939. Cornell University Press, 1998.

Communism has been an enduring presence on the French political scene for most of this century. It remains so in areas of the countryside, despite its collapse in the Soviet Union and in most of France’s urban areas. Shifting the emphasis away from the often-studied relationship between communism and the working class, Laird Boswell proposes a new interpretation of the French Communist Party’s success and illuminates rural social and political behavior during a critical period of economic crisis. Drawing on extensive interviews with thirty-four surviving communist militants and an analysis of voter behavior, this book focuses on the Party’s persistent strength during the interwar period in such rural strongholds as the Limousin and the Dordogne. Boswell shows how communism introduced modern politics in isolated rural communities, revived networks of village sociability and culture, and responded to the state’s inability to cope with the massive upheaval brought about by the gradual disappearance of peasant society. Boswell challenges standard interpretations that attribute Party success in rural areas to leftist voting traditions, red republicanism, or family structures. By showing how French peasants used the political arena to defend their interests, his book provides significant insights on the nature of European communism and on the transformation of the French countryside in the twentieth century.

Selected Publications

  • “Rural Society in Crisis,” in Nicholas Doumanis ed., Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914-1945, (Oxford University Press, 2016): 243-260.
  • “Noël à Strasbourg” Paris-Match / L’Histoire (Paris) (May 2014): 80-83.
  • “Rethinking the Nation at the Periphery,” French Politics, Culture and Society 27 (Summer 2009): 111-126.
  • “Should France be Ashamed of its History? Coming to Terms with the Past in France and its Eastern Borderlands,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religion 9 (June 2008): 237-251.
  • « L’historiographie du communisme français est-elle dans une impasse? », Revue française de science politique 55, no. 5-6 (2005): 919-934.
  • “La petite propriété fait le communisme (Limousin, Dordogne),” Etudes Rurales no. 171-172 (July-December 2004) : 73-82.
  • “Fissures dans la nation française: les réfugiés Alsaciens et Lorrains en 1939-1940,” in Max Lagarrigue ed., 1940, La France du repli, l’Europe de la défaite (Toulouse: Privat, 2001), 197-208.
  • “From Liberation to Purge Trials in the “Mythic Provinces:” the Reconfiguration of Identities in Alsace and Lorraine, 1918-1920,” French Historical Studies 23 (Winter 2000): 129-162.
  • “Franco-Alsatian Conflict and the Crisis of National Sentiment during the Phoney War,” Journal of Modern History (September 1999): 552-584.
  • “Le communisme et la défense de la petite propriété en Limousin et en Dordogne,” Communisme [Paris] 51-52 (1998): 7-27.
  • “The French Rural Communist Electorate,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (Spring 1993): 719-749.
  • Review essay: “How do French Peasants Vote?” Peasant Studies 16: 2 (Winter 1989): 107-122.

Selected Awards

  • University of Wisconsin Sabbatical (2005)
  • University of Wisconsin Graduate School Research Committee Summer funding (2004; 1998; 1996)
  • Humanities Institute, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Resident Fellowship (1997)
  • German Marshall Fund of the United States Research Fellowship (1995)
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend, 1991

History Lecture Courses