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This collection of essays celebrates twenty years of Women in French, a network of female academics working in the discipline of French Studies. Based on papers delivered at the group’s tenth biennial conference in Leeds, which was entitled ‘Le parcours’, the volume investigates the theme of trajectories in French and Francophone women’s lives and writings. The book begins with consideration of the ways in which traces of women’s lives, experiences and texts are conserved in archives and communicated to new generations of readers through the practice of women’s biography. It then addresses the presence of women in public spaces such as journalism, politics and the street. The volume goes on to examine women’s representations in literary space and their use of imaginative writing to depict, interrogate and transform their life trajectories. It considers women’s movements through geographical space, looking at the intersections between gender and travel. With the inclusion of essays from a range of disciplinary perspectives, the volume highlights the variety of French and Francophone women’s contributions to society, culture and politics as well as celebrating the diversity of women’s contributions to the discipline of French Studies in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Europe.

The chapters in this book were first presented at the Women in French Biennial Conference held in Leeds in May 2004. The twelve essays explore the multifaceted commodification of the female body and provide insights into the mutations of French society and culture. British and French scholars examine the paradoxes and contradictions embodied in various images and discourses related to health and illness from different perspectives, ranging from sociological studies to analyses of working diaries, children’s medical encyclopaedias and literary texts.The ‘resilient female body’ as epitomised by the First World War nurse tends by the end of the twentieth century to be construed as the ‘sanitised female body’, subjected to mind/body dualities largely controlled by the medical professions. Thus, maternity and related issues such as birth and contraceptive technologies figure as major themes with contributors revealing unresolved ambivalences. Other chapters focus on how women’s economic activity can affect their individual health and, potentially, that of others. A further prominent theme shows how, for contemporary women writers, serious illnesses such as cancer and madness in women can be seen as rich metaphors for the ills of a male-dominated society. Duras’s alcoholism and Aragon’s portrayals of prostitution are also discussed.

This volume takes advantage of the Fortieth Anniversary of the Fifth French Republic to offer a wide-ranging yet focussed assessment of key issues in France. Acknowledged specialists in a variety of disciplines such as politics, history, economics and cultural studies appraise such issues as citizenship, ethnicity, regional development, youth, gender and justice. In a post-colonial context in which France reassesses her identity and influence at European and global level, contributors foreground not only national or institutional interests, but also suggest alternative perspectives, thus giving voice to some of France's so-called 'others'. Common themes and concerns are thus established across the different discourses, which characterize modern and contemporary France. These are shot through with the preoccupation as to what is, or should be, the nature of the Fifth French Republic.