The memory industry was in overdrive in Paris this summer as France marked the fiftieth anniversary of “Mai 68,” that defining month when major Parisian arteries turned into seas of flag-waving young people and occupied high schools and universities. After violent clashes between students and security forces on May 10 left 367 wounded, and huge swaths of Paris’s Left Bank resembling a war…
Susan Whitney
Susan Whitney is an associate professor of history at Carleton University. She is teaching courses on twentieth-century France, modern Paris, and comparative youth history this year. Whitney is the author of Mobilizing Youth: Communists and Catholics in Interwar France (Duke University Press).
Articles by
Susan Whitney
Sisterhood of the Secret Pantaloons
Suffragists and their descendants: the long view from Joan Sangster, Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt June 2018
At this point in history, women have governed six Canadian provinces; Beverley McLachlin presided over the Supreme Court for eighteen critical years; Chrystia Freeland serves as minister of foreign affairs and negotiator-in-chief to Donald Trump’s America; and the prime minister proclaims himself a feminist. It can be hard, then, to imagine—or remember—just how long Canadian women had to battle for that most basic of political…
In October 2017, Quebec’s National Assembly passed legislation prohibiting women from receiving public services while wearing a niqab, which covers the wearer’s face. Muslim women were among those who objected. Saima Sajid said to Globe and Mail reporter Ingrid Peritz, “If you choose to wear a bikini, why can’t I cover myself?” These contrasting approaches to women’s bodies and sexuality lie at the heart of gender historian Joan Wallach Scott’s probing and intentionally provocative new…