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An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including postcolonialism in France, decolonization between 1950s-1960s and difference between postcolonial and 19th century studies.

In Pierre Nora's Lieux de me ´moire project, there are no obvious references to the bagne. The omission is surprising, for this institution has long played a significant role in the French imagination. It persists in the French language in several prominent expressions, and continues to be associated with key national symbols such as the bonnet phrygien. This silencing is associated with representations of the penal colony in popular culture and in heritage practices, both of which tend to associate the bagne with 'dangerous' white French bagnards, failing accordingly to recognize the wider impact of the institution on colonized spaces. The article draws on a corpus of postcolonial representations or discussions of the bagne to propose a new, more enabling way of exploring (and memorializing) this essentially nineteenth-century phenomenon. Analysis of texts by Le ´on-Gontran Damas, Kateb Yacine, Leı ¨la Sebbar, Anouar Benmalek, Mehdi Lallaoui, and Patrick Chamoiseau suggests that this 'postcolonialization' of the penal colony through new forms of creative engagement allows the recognition of transcolonial axes of penal trans- portation, exemplified by the banishment of Kabyle rebels to New Caledonia following their revolt against the impact of French occupation in spring 1871. The article concludes by drawing on recent postcolonial engagement with concepts such as 'legacies' and 'ruins' -- particularly in the work of Ann Laura Stoler and Chamoiseau -- to suggest that alternative narratives, and new critical and aesthetic approaches to the penal colony, have begun to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an interview with former Society for French Studies president Charles Forsdick who discusses his optimism on discipline, his insight on modern language community, and the renewed teaching emphasis for French studies.

While the American and French Revolutions have regularly been commemorated in film, this article argues that their Haitian equivalent – despite its own world-historic significance and global cultural impact – still awaits serious cinematic representation. However, the idea of making just such a film stirred the imagination of the one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, the Soviet film-director Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948). Eisenstein’s project – developed both in the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, and involving sustained collaboration with Paul Robeson – would have constituted an important addition to the extensive catalogue of cultural representations of the Haitian Revolution, but the film remained unrealized. The fate of Eisenstein’s lost Haitian Revolution project, ‘one of the great unmade movies of the twentieth century’, is examined, and the film is situated in the wider dramatic context of the 1930s, when the transnational collective memory of the Revolution came to have a profound new meaning in the context of shifting Soviet power struggles as well as that of Western imperialist interventions in Ethiopia and Haiti itself. This article offers the first comprehensive account of the genesis and evolution of Eisenstein’s planned film, and explores in depth the director’s investment in this project in order to assess its significance in cultural, historical and political terms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the response of the public to the views of the U.S. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson with regards to his idea of comparing the Brexit referendum campaign to the French Revolution during the 2016 Bastille Day celebration in France.

An interview by Charles Forsdick with former Society for French Studies (SFS) President Susan Harrow about her ten years' service on the SFS Executive Committee and her views on the contemporary discipline is presented. She mentions the advocacy for French and its sister languages as a key part of the committee's work and one of the major challenges the SFS faced. She also assesses the diversity and growth of the discipline and explores public understanding of languages in the Great Britain.

The article highlights French President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Haiti on February 17, 2010. It was the first French Presidential visit after 180 years when France granted Haitian independence. With the visit held after an earthquake in Haiti, Sarkozy indicated continued international relief efforts and the need to address unresolved historical legacies, in a speech at Port-Au-Prince. The speech resonates his refusal to address colonial history implications for a postcolonial France.

The article discusses the structural organization of several French literature. The theme of "Les Carnets de Shérazade," by Leïa Sebbar dealt with modern travel and migration. Sebbar considered her observations of various languages in France. The style of authorship showed both fictional and documentary themes. In the modern British tradition of French studies, the coherence of literature organization was argued by Christophe Campos and examined the use of grammatical structure in the texts.

The author discusses his concerns on UK Research Councils' (RCUK) Open Access (OA) policy which gives the public free online access to academic articles. The policy took effect on April 1, 2013 obliging all articles financed by RCUK be accessible on OA while disqualifying those which do not adhere to the policy. The author's concern on the effects of OA on the Society for French Studies journals is also mentioned.