Destruction Des Archives

The bilingual, French–English journal Méthod(e)s, founded in 2015, is an African initiative with the objective to enlarge the methodological debates on the Global South. The desire for a strong understanding of methodology is to situate it above academic trends, thereby placing it in line with a universal history of the sciences. Just as calling dominant paradigms into question leaves room for creative opportunities, so does the comparison of theoretical approaches and technical models of data collection. Questions related to methods are not purely technical or merely philosophical reflections. The examination of the method used in scientific investigations necessarily leads us to question the validity and consequences of research results. From this point of view, the journal Méthod(e)s is not a forum for simple discussions on the mechanics of research but a tool to question social interests influencing academic research and giving it a political function. It is also intended to lead to a more critical look at the creation of theories dealing with the status of individuals and societies in Africa and the Global South. Méthod(e)s aims to bring into question, connect, and compare the theoretical, technical, and political foundations of the social sciences as applied to human societies. Each contribution is followed by a summary in the respectively other language. In order to ensure a broad intellectual reach, the editors reserve the right to include articles written in other languages. All the abstracts of the papers are also available in Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jewish historian Zosa Szajkowski gathered up tens of thousands of documents from Nazi buildings in Berlin, and later, public archives and private synagogues in France, and moved them all, illicitly, to New York. In The Archive Thief, Lisa Moses Leff reconstructs Szajkowski's story in all its ambiguity. Born into poverty in Russian Poland, Szajkowski first made his name in Paris as a communist journalist. In the late 1930s, as he saw the threats to Jewish safety rising in Europe, he broke with the party and committed himself to defending his people in a new way, as a scholar associated with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Following a harrowing 1941 escape from France and U.S. army service, Szajkowski struggled to remake his life as a historian, eking out a living as a YIVO archivist in postwar New York. His scholarly output was tremendous nevertheless; he published scores of studies on French Jewish history that opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, modernization, and the rise of modern antisemitism. But underlying Szajkowski's scholarly accomplishments were the documents he stole, moved, and eventually sold to American and Israeli research libraries, where they remain today. Part detective story, part analysis of the construction of history, The Archive Thief offers a window into the debates over the rightful ownership of contested Jewish archives and the powerful ideological, economic, and psychological forces that have made Jewish scholars care so deeply about preserving the remnants of their past.

"Report of the Dominion fishery commission on the fisheries of the province of Ontario, 1893", issued as an addendum to vol. 26, no. 7.

This thoroughly revised and expanded edition of a key textbook offers an innovative and accessible account of the richness and diversity of French film history and culture from the 1890s to the present day. The contributors, who include leading historians and film scholars, provide an indispensable introduction to key topics and debates in French film history. Each chronological section addresses seven key themes – people, business, technology, forms, representations, spectators and debates, providing an essential overview of the cinema industry, the people who worked in it, including technicians and actors as well as directors, and the culture of cinema going in France from the beginnings of cinema to the contemporary period.

"Report of the Dominion fishery commission on the fisheries of the province of Ontario, 1893", issued as vol. 26, no. 7, supplement.