POPKIN, Jeremy D(avid) 1948-

PERSONAL: Born December 19, 1948, in Iowa City, IA; son of Richard and Juliet Popkin; married; wife's name Beate, 1980; children: two. Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 1970, Ph.D., 1977; Harvard University, M.A., 1971.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of History, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Professor and author. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, visiting assistant professor, 1977-78; University of Kentucky, Lexington, assistant professor of history, 1978—.

MEMBER: American History Association, Society of French History Studies, ASECS.

AWARDS, HONORS: Newberry Library fellow, 1983; Max-Planck Institut fur Geschichte, 1985; National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Seminar for College Teachers, 1987; National Endowment for the Humanities, resident fellow, 1988-89; Fulbright Resident fellow (France), 1991-92; visiting scholar at Maison des Sciences de l'Home-Rhone-Alpes, 1991-92; John Simon Guggenheim fellow, 1992-93; UK Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, 1995-96.

WRITINGS:

The Right-Wing Press in France, 1792-1800 (monograph), University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1980.

(Editor, with Jack R. Censer) Press and Politics inPre-Revolutionary France, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1987.

News and Politics in the Age of Revolution: JeanLuzac's "Gazette de Leyde," Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1989.

Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789-99, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1990.

A History of Modern France, Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1994.

(Editor) Media and Revolution: Comparative Perspectives, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1995.

A Short History of the French Revolution, Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1995.

(Editor, with Bernadette Fort) The Memoirs, Secrets, and the Culture of Publicity in Eighteenth-Century France, Voltaire Foundation (Paris, France), 1998.

(Editor, translator, and author of preface) Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Panorama of Paris: Selections from "Tableau de Paris," Pennsylvania State University Park (University Park, PA), 1999.

(Editor, with Richard H. Popkin) The Abbé Grégoire and His World, Kluwer (Boston, MA), 2000.

A History of Modern France, Prentice Hall (Upper Saddle River, NJ), 2001.

Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France,1830-1835, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA), 2002.

History, Historians and Autobiography, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2004.

Also contributor to journals including American Historical Review, Journal of Modern History, Historical Journal, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, Journalism Quarterly, and Jewish Social Studies.

SIDELIGHTS: Jeremy Popkin is an authority on French history and the history of the press in France. In an interview with CA Popkin explained, "My first book, The Right-Wing Press in France, 1792-1800, is a study of how communications media influence and are affected by political and social movements. I was interested to find that the conservative opponents of the French Revolution used the newspaper press extensively and effectively to combat the movement which had made a free press in France possible in the first place. I have been led to ask whether our traditional equation of freedom of the press with freedom and progress in general is correct."

Media and Revolution: Comparative Perspectives contains thirteen essays written mostly by historians, but also by literature professors and journalists. The essays explore the role of mass media in reporting revolutionary events in France spanning 350 years. Writing in the American Political Science Review, Doris A. Graber explained that the essay-writers do not reach a conclusion regarding mass media's role in revolution. "The assessments they make about media influence run the gamut from considering the media central to revolutionary processes to deeming them peripheral," remarked Graber. "The case studies assembled in Media and Revolution represent a motley array of news sources covering successful and failed revolutions in dissimilar countries during different historical periods," Graber explained.

Popkin coedited The Abbé Grégoire and His World. The book is an analysis of the ideas and influence of the Abbé Henri Grégoire, an important figure during the French Revolution. Grégoire was a social activist, who fought for the rights of blacks and Jews and reform in the Catholic church. In the English Historical Review, William Doyle described the book as "an important and useful collection which underlines how unjustly neglected this fascinating figure has been until recently."

Popkin's Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France, 1830-1839 examines the role of the press during the French Revolutionary crisis of the early 1830s, with particular emphasis on newspapers and publishers in the Early July Monarchy. In Nineteenth-Century French Studies, reviewer Janice Best explained that Popkin "argues that the press of the early 1830s and principally that of France's second largest city, Lyon, must be seen as a 'prime force in defining the conflicts that shaped the early years of nineteenth-century bourgeois society.'" Best went on to say, "Through a close—although perhaps too strictly monologic—reading of journalistic texts produced in Lyon in the 1830s, Popkin shows the emergence of new discourses aimed not entirely at the conquest of political legitimacy, but rather at a redefinition of the notion of the public, particularly the notion of a unified public opinion." Library Cultures' Thomas C. Sosnowski deemed the book "a significant contribution to the historical literature of the July Monarchy." Sosnowski observed that Popkin's "superior archival skills are apparent everywhere in this work." He also considered Popkin's argument on the development of social identities of the bourgeoisie to be "well crafted and supported." While most reviewers praised the book, they criticized the title. Sosnowski acknowledged that the title would have been better if it hinted at the book's "strong Lyonnais roots," but went on to explain that with such a title change "the academic public might have ignored its significance because of its provincial focus."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, October, 1991, review of Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789-99, p. 1205; review of News and Politics in the Age of Revolution: Jean Luzac's "Gazette de Leyde,", p. 1206.
American Political Science Review, December, 1995, Doris A. Graber, review of Media and Revolution: Comparative Perspectives, pp. 1058-1060.

Choice, April, 1990, review of News and Politics in the Age of Revolution, p. 1314; July, 1990, review of Revolutionary News, p. 1880; November, 1995, review of Media and Revolution, p. 456.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, fall, 1991, review of Revolutionary News, p. 85; fall, 2001, Panorama of Paris: Selections from "Tableau de Paris,", p. 153.

English Historical Review, January, 1983, review of The Right Wing Press in France, 1792-1800, p. 210; William Doyle, review of The Abbé Grégoire and His World, pp. 993-995.

Foreign Affairs, September, 1995, Francis Fukuyama, review of Media and Revolution, p. 160.

French Review, March, 1993, review of RevolutionaryNews, p. 707.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, spring, 1991, review of Revolutionary News, p. 684.

Journal of Modern History, June, 1981, review of TheRight Wing Press in France, 1792-1800, p. 339; December, 1991, review of News and Politics in the Age of Revolution, p. 762.

Journal of the History of Ideas, January, 1990, review of News and Politics in the Age of Revolution, p. 171; October, 1991, review of Revolutionary News, p. 685.

JQ: Journalism Quarterly, summer, 1990, review of News and Politics in the Age of Revolution, p. 442; autumn, 1990, review of News and Politics in the Age of Revolution, p. 608; winter, 1991, review of Revolutionary News, p. 860.

Libraries and Culture, fall, 1992, Thomas C. Sosnowski, review of Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France, 1830-1835, pp. 392-394.

Library Journal, March 15, 1995, review of Media and Revolution, p. 86.

Nineteenth-Century French Studies, fall, 2002, Janice Best, review of Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France, 1830-1835, pp. 155-157.

Reference and Research Book News, November, 1995, review of Media and Revolution, p. 64; May, 2001, review of The Abbé Grégoire and His World, p. 36.

Times Literary Supplement, December 14, 1990, review of Revolutionary News, p. 1355.

ONLINE

University of Kentucky Web site, http://www.rgs.uky.edu/vpresearch/popkin.html/ (January 23, 2004), "2003-2004 University Research Professors."

University of North Carolina Web site, http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/dupont/popkin.htm/ (January 23, 2004), "Jesse Ball duPont Summer Seminars: Seminar Leader."*