Roger, Philippe 1949–

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Roger, Philippe 1949–

PERSONAL:

Born 1949. Education: École Normale Supérieure, agrégation in classics, 1972.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Faculty of Arts and Sciences, New York University, 5 Washington Sq. N., 1st Fl., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Yale University, New Haven, CT, assistant, 1972-73; Lycée Claude-Bernard, Paris, France, stage d'agrégation, 1973-74; Lycée Polyvalent de Vernon, Vernon, France, professor of humanities, 1974-76; New York University, New York, NY, deputy director of Institute of French Studies, 1978-81, associate professor, 1981-84, professor of French and chair of eighteenth-century studies, 1985—, Global Distinguished Professor of French; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (French National Center for Scientific Research), Paris, France, research program director, 1985—. École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, professor of French and director of studies; University of Virginia, professor of French; Institut Mémoires de l'Edition comtemporaine, member of board.

MEMBER:

International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, French Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Attaché de recherche, Fondation Thiers, 1976-78; Bronze Medal, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1991; chevalier, Ordre des Palmes académiques, 1993; Prix Aujourd'hui, 2003, for L'Ennemi américain: Généalogie de l'antiaméricanisme français.

WRITINGS:

Sade: La Philosophie dans le pressoir, Editions Grasset (Paris, France), 1976.

(Editor, with Michel Camus) Sade, écrire la crise, Editions P. Belfond (Paris, France), 1983.

Roland Barthes, roman, Editions Grasset (Paris, France), 1986, new edition, Livre de Poche, Biblio-Essais (Paris, France), 1990.

(Editor, with Jean-Claude Bonnet) La Légende de la Révolution au XXe siècle: De Gance à Renoir, de Romain Rolland à Claude Simon, Editions Flammarion (Paris, France), 1988.

(Editor) L'Homme des Lumières: De Paris à Pétersbourg: Actes du colloque international (automne 1992), Vivarium (Naples, Italy), 1995.

(Editor) Biblioteca Europea, Vivarium (Naples, Italy), 1995.

(Editor, with Robert Morrissey) L'Encyclopédie: du réseau au livre et du livre au réseau, H. Champion (Paris, France), 2001.

L'Ennemi américain: Généalogie de l'antiaméricanisme français, Seuil (Paris, France), 2002, translation by Sharon Bowman published as The American Enemy: A Story of French Anti-Americanism, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

(Editor, with Jean Dagen) Un Siècle de deux cents ans? Les XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Continuités et discontinuités, Desjonquères (Paris, France), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Language and Rhetoric of the Revolution, edited by John Renwick, Edinburgh University Press, 1990; Sade and the Narrative of Transgression, edited by David B. Allison, Mark S. Roberts, and Allen S. Weiss, Cambridge University Press, 1995; Writing the Image after Roland Barthes, edited by J.-M. Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997; and Erotikon: Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern, edited by Shadi Bartsch and Thomas Bartscherer, University of Chicago Press, 2005. Contributor to periodicals, including Continuum, Huntington Library Quarterly, Journal of American History, Stanford French Review, Yale French Studies, and Yale Journal of Criticism. Editor of Critique, 1996—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Philippe Roger had written a number of books before 2002, but it was the publication of that year's L'Ennemi américain: Généalogie de l'antiaméricanisme français, published in 2005 in English translation as The American Enemy: A Story of French Anti-Americanism, that led him to bestselling status in the English-speaking world. Even before the English version appeared, the work attracted numerous English-language reviews, in part because tensions between the two countries escalated in 2003 upon the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which France opposed. In what critics such as Herb Greer in the World and I regarded as an "exhaustive and impressive account," Roger shows that anti-American sentiment has in fact been woven deeply into French life for hundreds of years. Reviewing the book in the London Sunday Times, Sebastian Faulks remarked that "the achievement of Professor Roger's book is to show that French hostility to the United States is different from the misgivings of other countries and is ultimately not much influenced by diplomatic disagreements or even by historical events."

The American Enemy was widely reviewed, with many describing it as ambitious and scholarly as well as entertaining. Tony Judt summarized it in the New York Review of Books as "a superb history of French anti-Americanism, elegant, learned, witty." The book includes examples of every sort of French criticism dating from the colonization of the New World to the Cold War, such that "each chapter is close to a monograph on a historical moment and the anti-American motifs born at that time," according to Edward C. Knox in French Politics, Culture, and Society. Some writers found the book too one-sided, with no attention given to areas of French acceptance of American culture or to the link between French anti-Americanism and French anti-Anglo-Saxonism, and Stephen Sartarelli in the Nation noticed that while Roger judges the French, he refrains from judging America for its own wrongs. Still, those with criticisms maintained the book's value—Sartarelli, for example, deemed it "admirable." Summing up the book in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Alex Danchev wrote that The American Enemy "is at once the most learned and the most playful study of a subject that cries out for both qualities. It will surely remain current for some time."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 2006, Michael Miller, review of The American Enemy: A Story of French Anti-Americanism, p. 263.

American Quarterly, June, 2006, Rob Kroes, review of The American Enemy, p. 503.

Boston Globe, April 10, 2005, Matthew Price, "Over There: Americans May Love to Hate the French. But a Parisian Scholar Says That American Francophobia Is Nothing Compared to the 200-Year-Old Gallic Tradition of Yankee-Bashing."

Choice, October, 2005, G.P. Cox, review of The American Enemy, p. 346.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, spring, 2003, Kathleen Hardesty Doig, "Encircling Encyclopedias," pp. 441-444.

Foreign Affairs, March-April, 2003, Walter Russell, "Why Do They Hate Us? Two Books Take Aim at French Anti-Americanism," p. 139; May-June, 2005, Stanley Hoffmann, review of The American Enemy, p. 140.

French Politics, Culture, and Society, summer, 2003, Edward C. Knox, "Tous Americains?—Not Yet, and Not Tous," p. 124.

French Review, December, 2003, review of L'Ennemi américain: Généalogie de l'antiaméricanisme français, p. 409.

French Studies, October, 1992, Diana Knight, review of Roland Barthes, roman, p. 486; October, 2007, Erec R. Koch, review of Un Siècle de deux cents ans? Les XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Continuités et discontinuités, p. 509.

Historian, winter, 2006, Paul Hollander, review of The American Enemy, p. 895.

History and Theory, February, 1992, Dena Goodman, "Public Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime," p. 1.

History Today, October, 2005, D.W. Ellwood, review of The American Enemy, p. 58.

Inroads, winter-spring, 2004, Donald Cuccioletta, "Why Do They Hate US? Unilateralism and the Rise of Anti-Americanism," p. 130.

Modern Language Review, April, 2005, Melissa Percival, review of L'Encyclopédie: du réseau au livre et du livre au réseau, p. 501.

Nation, January 12, 2004, Stephen Sartarelli, "Where Did Our Love Go? The French Aren't Feeling Warm toward Us, but It's Not because of ‘Anti-Americanism,’" p. 29.

New Republic, November 28, 2005, Paul Berman, "The Anti-Anti-Americans—France's Failures, France's Hatreds, and Signs of a New Look at America," p. 31.

New Statesman, April 18, 2005, Andrew Hussey, "Moronic Spirit," p. 52.

New York Review of Books, May 1, 2003, Tony Judt, review of L'Ennemi américain, p. 24.

New York Times, March 14, 2005, Edward Rothstein, "In Battle of Mutual Hostility, U.S. Is Outmatched by France."

Publishers Weekly, March 28, 2005, review of The American Enemy, p. 69.

Society, November-December, 2005, Daniel DiSalvo, review of The American Enemy, p. 101.

Sunday Times (London, England), May 1, 2005, Sebastian Faulks, review of The American Enemy.

Times Higher Education Supplement, December 23, 2005, Alex Danchev, "Rimbaud v. Rambo: Refinement against ‘Rah! Rah! Sis Boom Bah,’" p. 26.

Times Literary Supplement, December 6, 2002, review of L'Ennemi américain, p. 13; January 10, 2003, Henry Astier, "La maladie francaise: When Trouble Comes, First Blame the Americans," p. 3.

U.S. News and World Report, December 16, 2002, Robert Kunzig and Justin Ewers, "French Kiss-Off," p. 42.

World and I, February, 2004, Herb Greer, "Down with the Yanks!," p. 235.

World Policy Journal, summer, 2003, Bill Grantham, "Brilliant Mischief: The French on Anti-Americanism," p. 95.