Faculty Listing

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Elisa Camiscioli

Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Modern France, Race and Gender History/Theory, Colonial Culture, European Comparative

Office: LT 803

Phone: (607) 777-2386 E-mail: ecamis@binghamton.edu
My current research recasts the origins of French national identity by arguing that gender, race, and reproductive practices were central to its construction. I situate the realm of “the intimate” and its biopolitics at the core of the early twentieth-century immigration debate, thus revealing how questions of racial hygiene, marriage, sexuality, and reproduction were deeply implicated in the political and cultural order. By exploring the realms of pronatalism, prostitution, the marriage contract, racial mixing, and the rationalization of labor and the body, I underscore the critical role of embodiment and gender politics to the “immigrant question,” and in turn, how the bodies at stake were always racialized.

I am also conducting a book-length study of the French colonial presence in Pondicherry, South India, with special attention to the European appropriation of Eastern spiritual practices. Other research interests include: the relationship between France and Algeria; sex trafficking; reproductive technologies; and gendered colonialisms.

Recent or current undergraduate courses:

  • Race and Racism in Modern Europe
  • Gender and Sexuality in Modern Europe
  • Popular and Political Culture in Twentieth-Century France
  • Race, Immigration, and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Europe
  • Colonial Culture in India and "Indochina"

Recent or current graduate courses:

  • Gender and Colonialism
  • European Gender History and Theory
  • Imperial Encounters: Theory, Practice, Resistance
  • Gender History and Feminist Theory

Significant Publications
  • Embodying the French Race: Immigration, Reproduction, and National Identity in the Early Twentieth Century (forthcoming, Duke University Press).
  • "Race-Making and Race-Mixing in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate," in Hafid Gafaïti, Patricia Lorcin, and David Troyansky (eds.), Transnational Spaces and Identities in the Francophone World (forthcoming, University of Nebraska Press).
  • "Producing Citizens, Reproducing the 'French Race': Immigration, Demography, and Pronatalism in Early Twentieth-Century France," Gender and History, Vol. 13, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 593-621. Reprinted in Kathleen Canning and Sonya O. Rose (eds.), Gender, Citizenship, and Subjectivities (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002): pp. 167-95; and Antoinette Burton and Tony Ballantyne (eds.), Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004): 219-33.
  • "Intermarriage, Independent Nationality, and the Individual Rights of French Women: The Law of 10 August 1927," French Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 17, nos. 3 and 4 (Summer/Fall 1999): 52-74. Reprinted in Herrick Chapman and Laura Frader (eds.), Race in France: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004): 54-76.

Grants and Fellowships

  • State of New York/United University Professions Drescher Award, 2005-06
  • Binghamton University Dean's Research Award, 2004
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 2003
  • Asian and Asian-American Studies Program Curriculum Development Grant, 2002
  • American Historical Association Bernadotte E. Schmitt Research Grant, 2000
  • National Italian-American Foundation Cornaro Fellowship, 1995
  • Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship, 1994-1995
  • Chateaubriand French Government Fellow, 1994-1995
  • University of Chicago Graduate School of Social Sciences Fellowship, 1990-1994
  • American National Can Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, 1993