Ohio State nav bar

Alice L. Conklin

A picture of Alice L. Conklin in Giverny, France

Alice L. Conklin

Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History
She, her, hers

conklin.44@osu.edu

614-292-6325

232 Dulles Hall
230 Annie and John Glenn Avenue
Columbus, OH
43210

Google Map

Areas of Expertise

  • Modern French and European History
  • Comparative Empires
  • Race, Racism and Anti-racism
  • Colonial History

Education

  • B. A. Bryn Mawr College, 1979
  • D. E. A., École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
  • M. A. NYU, 1984
  • PhD Princeton University, 1990

View Alice Conklin's CV:  


Alice Conklin on Learning to Become a Historian.

Alice L. Conklin is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History and a faculty affiliate at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State University. She is a cultural, political, and intellectual historian of Modern France and its Empire with a focus on the twentieth century. Her most recent book is In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology and Empire in France, 1850-1950 (Cornell, 2013), which won the David H. Pinkney Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies and the Senior Book Prize from the Ohio Academy of History. An illustrated French edition of the book, Exposer l’humanité: race, ethnologie et empire en France, 1850-1950 (Editions scientifiques du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle) appeared in 2015. She is also the author of A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford University Press, 1997), which won the Berkshire Prize for Best Book by a Woman. She co-authored France and Its Empire since 1870, with Sarah Fishman and Robert Zaretsky (Oxford, 2nd ed., 2014) and European Imperialism, 1830-1930: Climax and Contradictions, with Ian Christopher Fletcher (Houghton Mifflin, 1998). Her articles have appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as the American Historical Review, French Historical Studies, Osiris, French Politics, Culture and Society, and Cahiers d’études africaines, She taught at the University of Rochester for thirteen years before moving to OSU in 2004 and has received several national and international awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a German Marshall Fund Fellowship and a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship. In 2016, she was one of six OSU faculty to receive a Distinguished Scholar Award.

She is currently working on two projects. One is a transnational history of French antiracism between 1945 and 1965, when ideals for cooperation among a broad coalition of scholars and activists around the world collided with unforeseen political realignments triggered by the Cold War. The second project is a volume of essays that she is co-editing with fellow historian Owen White, The Cambridge Companion to the French Empire (Cambridge University Press).

Since 2018, she has led a May Study Abroad Program called "Between France and Morocco: Inclusion and Exclusion in the Francophone World." Twenty-five students travel first to Paris, Aix-en-Provence and Marseille in France, and then on to Casablanca, Rabat, and Marrakech in Morocco. In 2019 she won the Diversity Enhancement Faculty Award for creating this innovative program.

She has advised several doctorates and undergraduate theses to completion..

Books:

 

 

Exposer L'Humanite

 

 

 

 

 


Exposer l’humanité: race, ethnologie et empire en France, 1850-1950 (Editions scientifiques du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 2015)


 

 

 

 

 

 



In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology and Empire in France, 1850-1950 (Cornell, 2013)


 

A Mission to Civilize

 

 

 

 

 

A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford University Press, 1997) 


 

 

 

 

 

 



France and Its Empire since 1870, with Sarah Fishman and Robert Zaretsky (Oxford, 2nd ed., 2014) 


 

 

European Imperialism: 1830 to 1930

 

 

 

 

 



European Imperialism, 1830-1930: Climax and Contradictions, with Ian Christopher Fletcher (Houghton Mifflin, 1998)

 

 

 

 

 

 

People Filters: