Professors of history Nicole Dombrowski-Risser and Sally Charnow will give a presentation, “Farmers and Poets: Feeding the Nation and Writing the War,” on the experience and impact of the Great War in France, at the Blue Hill Public Library on Thursday, July 18, at 7:00 PM. Their explorations tell new stories of those in the fields or on the margins who witnessed the war years in France, with the hope of better understanding of what the war meant beyond the battlefield.
They will talk about the arrival of the war in the French countryside, the call to arms, farmers’ reactions and military mobilization’s impact on a small olive-growing operation, located in the foothills of the southeastern Alps. They will also highlight the Swiss-born Jewish poet and playwright living in Paris on the eve of the war, Edmond Fleg, who volunteered to fight for France as part of the French Foreign Legion. Through his immediate postwar writings he argued for the continuation of the ecumenism and tolerance experienced during the war years and called for European disarmament.
Sally Charnow is a Professor of Modern European and post-Colonial History at Hofstra University. She brings together her interdisciplinary training in Performance Studies and History in her research and writing on issues related to culture, art, politics, and minority sub-cultures in modern France. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and Brooklin, Maine.
Nicole Dombrowski Risser has been researching and writing about French History for over 25 years. Her interests mostly involve questions about women, war, gender and refugees. She has taught at NYU, Princeton University and Towson University in Baltimore, MD where she lives with her family.
This event is sponsored by the library, there is no change and everyone is welcome. For more information call the library at 374-5515.
