The essays selected for inclusion in 'Explorations and Encounters in French' bring together many of the current research strands in French Studies today, tapping into current pedagogical trends, analyzing contemporary events in France, examining the Franco-Australian past, while reviewing teaching practice and the culture of teaching.

In this succinct dual biography, Laura Chmielewski demonstrates how the lives of two French explorers – Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, and Louis Jolliet, a fur trapper – reveal the diverse world of early America. Following the explorers' epic journey through the center of the American continent, Marquette and Jolliet combines a story of discovery and encounter with the insights derived from recent historical scholarship. The story provides perspective on the different methods and goals of colonization and the role of Native Americans as active participants in this complex and uneven process.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries secular French scholars started re-engaging with religious ideas, particularly mystical ones. Mysticism in the French Tradition introduces key philosophical undercurrents and trajectories in French thought that underpin and arise from this engagement, as well as considering earlier French contributions to the development of mysticism. Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers critical reflections on French scholarship in terms of its engagement with its mystical and apophatic dimensions. A multiplicity of factors converge to shape these encounters with mystical theology: feminist, devotional and philosophical treatments as well as literary, historical, and artistic approaches. The essays draw these into conversation. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary range of contributions from both new and established scholars, this book provides access to the melting pot out of which the mystical tradition in France erupted in the twenty-first century, and from which it continues to challenge theology today.

This publication accompanies an exhibition of approximately 120 works of art and science loaned mostly from the Royal Collection of Spain (Patrimonio Nacional) to the Seattle Art Museum. Featuring the work of such artists as Bosch, Titian, El Greco, Bernini, Vel¾zquez, Murillo, Zubar¾n, and Goya, this publication includesøpaintings, sculpture, tapestries, scientific instruments, maps, armor, books, and documents. Eight essays provide historical context and artistic explication. Chronologically organized, the book charts the evolution of Spanish attitudes toward knowledge, exploration, and faith during three dynasties of Spain?s golden age, when the fervor for scientific and geographical knowledge coexisted with the expansion of empire and promotion of Christianity. The four themes of the exhibition are: The Image of Empire; Spirituality and Worldliness; Encounters across Cultures; Science and the Court. Spain in the Age of Exploration, 1492?1819, presents art and science from one of the most ambitious, magnificent, and complex enterprises in history.

"As French and American historians of France are revisiting the history of French racism today, William B. Cohen's book is more important than ever. It has become a classic." —Nancy L. Green In this pioneering work, William B. Cohen traces the ways in which negative attitudes toward blacks became deeply embedded in French culture. Examining the forces that shaped these views, Cohen reveals the persistent inequality of French interactions with blacks in Africa, in the slave colonies of the West Indies, and in France itself. Now a classic, The French Encounter with Africans is essential reading for anyone engaged in current discussions of European relations with non-Europeans and with issues of racism, ethnicity, identity, colonialism, and empire.

Intro -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Introduction -- Castorland Journal 1793 -- Castorland Journal 1794 -- Castorland Journal 1795 -- Castorland Journal 1796-1797 -- Prospectus of the New York Company -- Constitution Of the New York Company -- Letter to Nicolas Olive -- Synopsis of Travel -- Overview of Castorland Workers -- Currency and Measures -- Place-Names in the Castorland Journal -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.

The history and concept of Jesuit mapmaking -- The possessions of the Spanish crown -- The viceroyalty of Peru -- Portuguese possessions: Brazil -- New France: searching for the Northwest Passage.

A collection of thirteen essays by leading scholars in the field, In God's Empire examines the complex ways in which the spread of Christianity by French men and women shaped local communities, French national prowess, and global politics in the two centuries following the French Revolution. More than a story of religious proselytism, missionary activity was an essential feature of French contact and interaction with local populations. In many parts of the world, missionaries were the first French men and women to work and live among indigenous societies. For all the celebration of France's secular "civilizing mission," it was more often than not religious workers who actually fulfilled the daily tasks of running schools, hospitals, and orphanages. While their work was often tied to small villages, missionaries' interactions had geopolitical implications. Focusing on many regions--from the Ottoman Empire and the United States to Indochina and the Pacific Ocean--this book explores how France used missionaries' long connections with local communities as a means of political influence and justification for colonial expansion. In God's Empire offers readers both an overview of the major historical dimensions of the French evangelical enterprise, as well as an introduction to the theoretical and methodological challenges of placing French missionary work within the context of European, colonial, and religious history.

Many Early Modern Europeans who during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries travelled to the New World left written or pictorial records of their encounters with a surprising fauna. The story told in this book is woven out of the threads of those texts and pictures. A New World of Animals shows how the initial wonder at the new beasts gave way to a more utilitarian approach, assessing their economic and medical potential. It elucidates how shifts in European perceptions brought the animals from the realm of the fantastic into the mainstream of early modern natural history, while at the same time changing the way in which Europeans saw their own world. Indeed, the chronicles and treatises of those who in the wake of the discovery arrived in the new lands tell as much about the particular interests and mental worlds of the writers as about the 'new animals'. This book traces the amazement of the first explorers and colonizers, the chronicles of soldiers and Indians, the 'natural histories of the New World', the place of animals in the network of economic interests driving the early expansion of Europe, the views of the missionaries and those of natural philosophers and physicians. Taking the reader from the Brazilian forests to the erudite cabinets of the Old World, from Patagonia to the centres of empire, the story of the discovery of the unexpected menagerie of the New World is also an exploration of Early Modern European imagination and learning.

For review see: J.W. Schulte Nordholt, in Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, jrg. 107, nr. 4 (1994); p. 591-592.