Mardi 6 mai 2025 à 18h, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, site Saint-Charles, salle 126.
Séminaire organisé dans le cadre de l’axe « Faire commun » d’EMMA. Intervention de Joseph Zitomersky.
Présentation de l’intervenant: Joseph Zitomersky est MCF honoraire à EMMA.
Joseph Zitomersky, is a native of Boston, Massachusetts, USA. After earning a Bachelors of Arts (B.A.) degree at Boston University, with a major in “history and government,” he taught history in two of that city’s high schools, consecutively (1964-1966). Afterward, he pursued studies in the University of Michigan ‘s Department of History’s innovative Masters and Doctoral program in Comparative History and Studies, which emphasized comparison, conceptualization, context, often in analytical (at times quantitative) and interdisciplinary form. These aspects would inform most of his subsequent historical work, which came to concern, broadly, the interplay of State, Space and Society over time. His spatial-temporal focus has basically been in North American, and secondarily Swedish, history from the 17th century to recent years,
As an “ABD” from Michigan he taught for four years (1973-1977) on American social history and on English-language historical documents in the History Department of the Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, For the next 17 years (1977-1994) he was attached to the History Department of the University of Lund, Sweden, where he held different research positions with an historical, policy-relevant orientation, essentially as regards questions of ageing and of ethnic diversity in Swedish and comparative international (essentially American and British) contexts from the 17th century onward. At the same time he taught in Lund University’s American Studies program, published different kinds of work – one monogram, edited works, articles – while adding an abiding interest in historiography to in his efforts. He obtained as well a Swedish Ph.D, on Native Americans in French colonial North America, 1660s – 1763.
On leave from his position in Sweden to undertake research on that subject, he occupied a temporary two-year position at the English Department (Charles 5, Paris 7) in Paris (1990-1992), which was followed by an equally temporary two-year position in the University Paul Valery’s English Department, where he co-organized an international conference with a Montpellier geographer on French colonization in different parts of the world, and co-edited the subsequent book, with both conference and book partly funded by a major Swedish scholarly organization. This period was followed by a permanent position as a Maitre de conference at the same English Department for the next 17 years (1994-2011), until he underwent formal institutional retirement. During these years his main thematic courses were on American ethnic history (LLCE), and on culture, economy and society (LEA). He also published early on a comparative article on French colonial North America (Canada and Louisiana), which was followed by several articles on race in French Louisiana, treated as history and historiography. He also co-organized an international conference in the United States on French and Spanish Louisiana.
For many of the past years, before and after formal retirement, he has been a member (permanent, then associate) of the UPV research laboratory EMMA, which, among other things, supported him in his publication of a book that he co-edited with an American historian in the United States, which was the fruit of an international conference held in Montpellier, which was to be published in the series of the PULM “Politiques et sociétés,” and which concerns “Conspiracy and Consent in International Perspective,” to quote the principal part of the work’s title.