People

Darcie Fontaine

Associate Professor and Graduate Director

CONTACT information and cv

Office: SOC 216
Email: dfontaine@usf.edu
Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Rutgers University, 2011

TEACHING

At USF I teach courses in Modern European and global history, with a particular focus on Europe’s interactions with the wider world. I offer courses on topics including 19th and 20th century Europe, "Global History since 1750," “Modern France and its Empire,” “Imperialism and Decolonization,” “Europe since 1945,” and “20th Century Europe in a Global Perspective.” I also frequently teach historical theory and methods courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

As a French colonial historian with a strong background in women’s and gender history, I bring an interdisciplinary element to any class I teach. Particularly in a survey class on European history, I emphasize the impact of other societies and cultures on European development. I underscore the ways minorities and marginalized peoples, including women, immigrants, and non-European populations fit into narratives of European history. By underlining the broader role of the world in the history of Europe, this approach provides students with a nuanced perspective of European history and encourages them to challenge the traditional histories of European development.

RESEARCH

My research has spanned a wide range of topics and geographic areas, from European women’s engagement in transnational interwar pacifist and antifascist movements to global refugee politics to the use of torture during the Algerian War of Liberation. What links all of these projects is my interest in exploring the moral frameworks that lead people to take up politically unpopular causes, many of which can put them at risk of great danger. Using a methodology that integrates social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history, I trace the ways in which people put ideas and concepts of morality into practice and conversely, how their actions shape thinking about morality, ethics, and religion.

My book Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Empire in France and Algeria, 1940-1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) examines French Christian engagement in the Algerian War of Liberation and the impact of Algerian decolonization on global Christianity. I argue that by the late 1950s, the Algerian War (1954-1962) had become a central focus for Christians around the globe and a test case for the question of how Christianity would respond to the potential crises of decolonization that were developing throughout Africa and Asia.

Additionally, articles that I have published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies and French Politics, Culture & Society explore various means through which Christians in France and Algeria negotiated the politics of decolonization in an increasingly globalized setting.

I am also in the process of writing a new textbook titled Modern France and the World (under contract with Routledge) that will situate the history of France and its empire in a global perspective from the eighteenth century to the present.

Editor of h-France Book Reviews

I am the Associate Editor of H-France Book Reviews. All books intended for review at H-France should be sent to the address below:

H-France
c/o Dr. Darcie Fontaine
USF History Department
4202 E. Fowler Ave., SOC 107
Tampa, FL 33620
USA