This collection of essays is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Lewis Kamm, Chancellor Professor Emeritus of French Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. During his long and successful academic career, Dr. Kamm directed eight National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) summer seminars. He was particularly proud of this achievement and enjoyed these engaging interactions with "some of the finest educators from across the country." The essays in this volume, born as participants' final seminar papers, stem from his last NEH seminar, which took place at the University of...

Nineteenth-century writer Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, has been a controversial part of the French patrimony, and faced various forms of racial prejudice in France because of his biracial ancestry and due to being a descendant of a slave. During the late nineteenth century, the rise of scientific racism and aggressive European imperialism resulted in worldviews supporting European superiority and equated "European" with being "white." Such developments complicated perceptions of Dumas as part of the French patrimony. French...

In recent years, genealogical websites and government agencies have made millions of valuable historical documents digitally available to the public. There is a tremendous amount of information that can be gleaned from these documents to aid scholars interested in social history. This volume brings together researchers presenting historically contextualized family case studies as a lens to enrich the reader's understanding of the past.

Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Man in the Iron Mask, is the most famous French writer of the nineteenth century. In 2002, his remains were transferred to the Panthéon, a mausoleum reserved for the greatest French citizens, amidst much national hype during his bicentennial. Contemporary France, struggling with the legacies of colonialism and growing diversity, has transformed Dumas, grandson of a slave from St. Domingue (now Haiti), into a symbol of the colonies and the larger francophone world in an attempt to integrate its immigrants and...