Gender and Fascism in Modern France

While the relationship between gender and fascism has been fully explored in studies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, attitudes toward women in the reactionary politics of post-revolutionary France have received little scholarly attention. This collection looks at right-wing ideology and its relation to gender in a variety of historical and cultural contexts, including women's writing, children's stories, film, books, magazines, and propaganda pieces. The volume addresses the question of whether fascism's stereotype as "a pathologically masculine" ideology is indeed true. Essays explore topics like women and anti-Semitism during the Dreyfus affair, Genet and the fantasy of homo-fascism, gendered eugenics, and female icons during the Vichy period. Locating the intersection of gender and the right, the editors explain, significantly alters traditional perspectives on French culture in this century, thereby bringing to light not only new objects of study but challenging a priori assumptions about France's cultural politics.