Generations of Social Movements : The Left and Historical Memory in the USA and France

French political culture has long been seen as a model of leftist militancy, while the left in the United States is often perceived in terms of organizational discontinuity. Yet, the crisis of social democracy today suggests that at a time when the archetypal European welfare state is in danger, critics and citizens interested in understanding or reviving progressive politics are invited to consider the United States, where modes of creative activism recurrently demonstrate potentialities for a renewed leftist culture. Using a transatlantic perspective, this volume identifies activist influence through the designation or rejection of specific intellectual and militant figures across generations, and it examines various narrative modes used by militants to write their own history.

A specialist of African American and women's history, HélèneLe Dantec-Lowry is Professor of American Civilization at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, where she directs the Center for Research on North America.

Ambre Ivol is Associate Professor of US Civilization at the University of Nantes. Her research interests include Afro-American history, political history, and the study of intellectual generations. She is currently editing a Howard Zinn Reader (Agone, 2014).