Thomas W. Dodman
Research interests:
Modern France and French Empire; social, cultural and intellectual history; history and literature; critical social theory; medical humanities
I am a historian of modern France and its empire, with a broad training in social, cultural and intellectual history, and interdisciplinary interests in psychoanalysis, anthropology, political economy, and the deep ties between history and literature. My research interests and teaching range widely, from French colonialism in Algeria and contemporary francophone transfuges writers, to the history of political philosophy and the enduring question of why human beings return. In general, I like to investigate collective moments of social transformation – wars, revolutions, mass migrations… - and how they are experienced at an individual level, as lives of the in-between. My approach is resolutely problem-driven and I think of history less as a discipline than as a stance, un regard, a way of thinking questions through time, with a lazy eye to the present.
My first book, What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion (Chicago, 2018; French translation Nostalgie: Histoire d’une émotion mortelle (Seuil, 2023)) examined how people once died of nostalgia in order to tell a larger story about modernity, mental illness and alienation in a time of war and imperialism. A work of archival research, the book developed a theory of practice as a way of grounding the history of concepts and emotions in the capitalist epoch. In Les Volontaires: roman familial de la Révolution française (Seuil, 2025; English translation forthcoming) I zeroed in on the extraordinary life of three anonymous individuals during and after the French Revolution, harnessing the tools of microhistory and literature to tell the story of these ordinary “silhouettes” in extraordinary times. I am currently working on the auto-socio-biographical writing of French writer Annie Ernaux, a genre-defying literature that challenges us, among others things, to rethink the silent workings of that once-was-useful category of analysis: class.
I strongly believe in the value of collaborative work, both in my research and in the classroom, where I like to co-teach with colleagues from within and outside academia. Together with Clémentine Vidal-Naquet, Hervé Mazurel, Anouche Kunth, and Quentin Deluermoz, I coedit the interdisciplinary journal Sensibilités: histoire, critique & sciences sociales (Anamosa), devoted to the study of affective life in all its facets. Recent issues have explored the dialogue between sociology and neuroscience, money, insensibility, race, and dawn. I also serve on the editorial boards of Critical Historical Studies (Chicago) and Romanic Review (Duke), and was previously associate editor at Emotion Review (Sage). I have coedited a special issue of French Historical Studies on Epistolary Gestures together with Anne Verjus and Caroline Muller (Duke, 2021) as well as two collected volumes: a global history of war, featuring 55 specialists and offering a sweeping thematic panorama of armed conflicts since the nineteenth century (Une Histoire de la Guerre, du XIXe siècle à nos jours, Seuil, 2018, with Bruno Cabanes, Hervé Mazuel, and Gene Tempest); and an exploration of the afterlives of the Napoleonic empire (From the Napoleonic Empire to the Age of Empire, Palgrave, 2023, with Aurélien Lignereux).
I grew up in Italy and France, read history in the UK at University College London (BA 2001 & MA 2002), before moving to the US to pursue a doctorate at the University of Chicago (PhD 2011). Before joining Columbia I taught at Boston College, George Mason University, and Sciences Po Paris. At Columbia I teach in French, History, ICLS/Medical Humanities, and the Core Curriculum. I also co-chair the Affect Studies seminar and direct the History and Literature (HiLi) MA at Columbia’s Global Center in Paris. I dream of returning home, wherever that may be.
Representative publications:
What Nostalgia Was: War, Empire, and the Time of a Deadly Emotion, Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning (University of Chicago Press, 2018); revised French edition: Nostalgie: Histoire d’une émotion mortelle (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2022)
Les Volontaires: roman familial de la Révolution Française (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2025)
Empire after the Emperor: From the Napoleonic Empire to the Age of Empire, co-edited with Aurélien Lignereux (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022)
Une Histoire de la Guerre, du XIXe siècle à nos jours, co-edited with Bruno Cabanes, Hervé Mazurel, and Gene Tempest (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2018)
“Ordinary Radicalization: Becoming a Citizen-Soldier during the French Revolution,” The Journal of Modern History 94:4 (December 2022)
“Un pays pour la colonie: mourir de nostalgie en Algérie française, 1830-1880,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 66:3 (July 2011)
Quand vient l’aurore, issue #14 of Sensibilités: Histoire, critique & sciences sociales, co-edited. with Anouche Kunth (Anamosa, 2025)
Race, l’ombre portée, issue #12 of Sensibilités: Histoire, critique & sciences sociales, co-edited. with Sarah Mazouz (Anamosa, 2024)
Insensibilités, issue #11 of Sensibilités: Histoire, critique & sciences sociales, co-edited with Clémentine Vidal-Naquet, Anouche Kunth, Quentin Deluermoz and Hervé Mazurel (Paris: Anamosa, 2022)
Au miroir de l’argent, issue #9 of Sensibilités: Histoire, critique & sciences sociales, co-edited with Anouche Kunth, Quentin Deluermoz and Hervé Mazurel (Paris: Anamosa, 2021)
Controverses sur l’émotion. Neurosciences et sciences humaines, issue #5 of Sensibilités: Histoire, critique & sciences sociales, co-edited with Quentin Deluermoz and Hervé Mazurel (Paris: Anamosa, 2018)