In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who to ... Show More
Sep 12
Debarati Sanyal, "Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges" (Fordham, 2025)
Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges (Fordham, 2025) investigates the consequences of unfolding catastrophes across the world and the displacement they continue to produce. Through recent narratives and media representations of the refugee “crisis” at Europe’s ed ... Show More
43m 19s
Sep 7
Mélanie Lamotte, "By Flesh and Toil: How Sex, Race, and Labor Shaped the Early French Empire" (Harvard UP, 2026)
From the beginning of the seventeenth century, French colonies and trading posts sprawled across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In the first pan-imperial history of the early French Empire in the English language, Mélanie Lamotte shows how an increasingly cohesive legal culture ... Show More
40m 40s
Mar 2024
Michel Foucault & The Age of Consent
In this episode, I unpack the infamous 1977 letter signed by many French intellectuals including Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Félix Guattari, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and others critiquing France's consent laws. If you want to support me, you can do that wit ... Show More
22m 15s