Christian Jacobs | Associate Postgraduate

The State, Political Norms and Political Conflicts
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstraße 191, D-10117 Berlin
Email: christian.jacobs  ( at )  fu-berlin.de Tel: +49(0) 30 / 20 93 70700

Home Institution : Freie Universität Berlin | Disciplines : History |

Biography

Christian Jacobs is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Graduate School for Global Intellectual History at Freie Universität in Berlin and an associated scholar at the Centre Marc Bloch. He received his PhD in history in 2024 at the Freie Universität. He is currently working on a book manuscript based on his PhD research project that explores how political activists used concepts of culture in France from the 1960s to the 1980s. Previously, he has studied history in Freiburg, Martinique, Taipei, and Berlin. For his MA and PhD research projects, he has received fellowships at the German Historical Institute in Paris. He also was a guest scholar at EHESS Paris as well as Sciences Po Paris. Christian has published on Maoism in France, postcolonial memory culture in Western Europe, and (post)-migrant activism in France.

Researchtopic

Culture —Discovering a New Political Battleground in France and the World, 1962 -1984

The project analyzes the rising importance of culture as a concept in postcolonial France's political discourse until the 1980s. It explores contemporary conceptual debates on culture and how the concept changed during the period of investigation. The project analyzes the political usage of culture by political activists in three specific political movements: the women's movement, the postmigrant movement, and the so-called New Right. Since all the three movements were connected to people and ideas from all around the globe, the project does not look at France as a closed space but examines the importance of global developments and entanglements for the politicization of culture. Thus, the project sheds light on the influence of transnational networks and global circulation of ideas and helps to understand the interplay of conceptual debates and politics.

Institution of thesis
Freie Universität Berlin
Supervisor
Michael Goebel
Publications

Articles

Negotiations over the Past. 2009’s general strike in the French Caribbean and the Colonial Past: in: Stefan Berger, Christian Koller (ed.): Memory and Social Movements in Modern and Contemporary History (Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements), 2024 [FORTHCOMING].

From anti-imperialism to multiculturalism. (Post)-migrant media in postcolonial France, in: Labor History (2022), https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2022.2148640.

Mehr als eine Projektion. Maoismus in Frankreich in den 1960er- und 1970er Jahren, in: Francia. Forschungen zur Geschichte Westeuropas 47 (2020), pp. 181-204, https://doi.org/10.11588/fr.2020.1.86568.

Placing German Colonialism in the City. Berlin Postkolonial’s Tour in the African Quarter, in: Global Histories 5/2 (2019), pp. 110 - 117, https://doi.org/10.17169/GHSJ.2019.341 (Together with Paul Sprute).

Book Reviews

Review of Cyril Cordoba: Au-delà du rideau de bamboo. Relations culturelles et amitiés politiques sino-suisses. Neuchâtel: Éditions Alphil, 2020, in: Traverse. Revue d’histoire (2021/3).

Review of Patrick Boucheron; Stéphane Gerson (ed.): France in the World. A New Global History. New York  2019, in: H-Soz-Kult, 15.07.2021.

Review Article of Ludivine Bantigny: 1968. De grands soirs en petits matins, Paris 2018, and Christina von Hodenberg: Das andere Achtundsechzig. Gesellschaftsgeschichte einer Revolte, München 2018, in: Arbeit - Bewegung - Geschichte (2020/3), pp. 147 – 149.

Review Article of Gilian Glaes: African Political Activism in Postcolonial France. State Surveillance and Social Welfare, Abingdon 2019, und Felix Germain: Decolonizing the Republic. African and Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Paris, 1946–1974, East Leansing 2016, in: French History 34/3, September 2020, pp. 402–405, https://doi.org/10.1093/fh/craa061.

Review of Julia Lovell: Maoism. A Global History, London 2019, in: Global Histories 5/2 (2019), pp. 160 - 163.

Review of François Hourmant: Les Années Mao en France. Avant, pendant et après mai 68, Paris 2018, in: Archiv für Sozialgeschichte (online) 59, 2019.