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Faculty

Caroline Ford


Professor


Contact Information

Email    CFORD@HISTORY.UCLA.EDU
Office  5254 Bunche Hall
Phone  310-206-9607
Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Caroline Ford grew up in Europe.

She completed her Ph.D. in European history at the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard University (1988-1995) as an assistant and associate professor, and then at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (1995-2004) as associate professor, before joining UCLA as professor of history in July 2004.

Her first book, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton University Press, 1993) explores religion, nation formation, and the creation of regional and religious identities in France at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was translated into French and published by Presses Universitaires de Rennes in 2018 as De la province à la nation: Religion et identité politique en Bretagne, with a new introduction. Her second book, Divided Houses: Religion and Gender in Modern France (Cornell University Press, 2005), focuses on the feminization of religion in post-revolutionary France and its impact on the civil/political status of women as well as the creation of a distinctive laïc republican political culture by the early twentieth century.  Her third book, Natural interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France was recently published by Harvard University Press (2016). It has been translated into French and published in 2018 by Editeur Alma as Naissance de l'écologie: polémiques françaises sur l'environnement, 1800-1930.  She is currently working on two new projects, which emerged out of her work on French environmentalism. The first is an environmental history of Paris from the seventeenth century to the present, which has been commissioned by Oxford University Press, and the second focuses the city of Paris's housing crisis as well as the social and environmental dimensions of architectural modernism in the sphere of social housing  in the first half of the twentieth century. Recent publications include "The Environmental Transformation of 'Empty Space':  From Desert to Forest in the Landes of Southwestern France," Comparattive Studies in Society and History (2023).

Caroline Ford teaches courses on modern France, French colonialism and the Algerian war, the history of Paris, modern European History, and environmental history in global perspective.

A recipient of a number of awards and fellowships, she was awarded a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for 2011-12.

Selected Publications

De la province à la nation: Religion et identité politique en Bretagne 

Naissance de l'écologie: polémiques françaises sur l'environnement, 1800-1930


Natural Interests: The Contest over Environment in Modern France
(Harvard University Press, 2016)

"The Paris Housing Crisis and a Social Revolution in Domestic Architecture on the Eve of the First World War," Journal of Modern History, 90, no. 3 (September 2018): 580-620.

"The Inheritance of Empire and the Ruins of Rome in French Colonial Algeria," in eds. Paul Betts and Corey Ross, Heritage in the Modern World: Historical Preservation in Global Perspective, Past and Present Supplement 10, 226 (Feb. 2015): 57-77.

"National Parks and Natural Reserves in French Colonial Africa," in Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historical Perspective, ed. Bernhard Gissibl, Sabine Höhler and Patrick Kupper (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012)

"Museums After Empire in Metropolitan and Overseas France," Journal of Modern History 83, no. 3 (September 2010): 625-61.

"'Peasants Into Frenchmen' Thirty Years After" in a dossier on "Revisiting Eugen Weber's Peasants Into Frenchmen" in French Politics, Culture and Society 27, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 84-93.

Co-editor with Tamara Whited of a special issue, "New Directions in French Environmental History," French Historical Studies, 32, no. 3 (Summer 2009).

"Reforestation, Landscape Conservation, and the Anxieties of Empire in French Colonial Algeria" American Historical Review (April, 2008): 341-362. Winner of the William Koren, Jr. Prize, 2009.

“Eugen Weber: El historiador como Viajero,” Historia Social 62 (2008): 121-31.

"Nature's Fortunes: New Directions in European Environmental History," Journal of Modern History (March 2007).


Divided Houses: Religion and Gender in Modern France (Cornell University Press, 2005).

“Nature, Culture, and Conservation in France and Her Colonies, 1840-1940,” Past and Present, no. 183 (May 2004): 173-198.

“Nationalism,” in Encyclopedia of European Social History, ed. Peter Stearns, vol. 2 (New York: Scribner, 2001).

“Landscape and Environment in French Geographical and Historical Thought: New Directions in French Historical Writing,” French Historical Studies, vol. 24 (Winter 2001).

“The Use and Practices of Tradition in the Politicization of Rural France in the Nineteenth Century,” in La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle (France, Italie, Espagne, Portugal, et Grèce), eds. Maurice Agulhon et Gilles Pécout (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 2001).

“Story-Telling and the Social Imagery of Religious Conflict in 19th-Century France: The Case of Jeanne Francoise Le Monnier,” in The Moral World of the Law, eds., Chris Wickham and Peter Coss, Past and Present Publications (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

“Violence and the Sacred in Nineteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies, vol. 21, no. 1 (Winter 1998).


Creating the Nation In Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton University Press, 1993).

Research

Modern France, environmental history; urban and architectural history

Graduate Students

Lauren Janes (Ph.D. 2011)

Deborah Bauer (Ph.D. 2013

Rachel Schley (Ph.D. 2015)

Ethan Mefford

Pin-Hua Chou

Liam Moore

Current Courses by Term

2022 Fall Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Topics in Historiography: World History

2023 Winter Quarter

History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to Present

Topics in History: Modern Europe

Previous Courses by Term

2019 Winter Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Topics in Historiography: World History

2018 Fall Quarter

Introduction to Western Civilization: Circa 1715 to Present

Departmental Seminar: Approaches, Methods, Debates, Practices

2018 Winter Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Capstone Seminar: History -- World History

2017 Fall Quarter

Introduction to Western Civilization: Circa 1715 to Present

Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

2016 Fall Quarter

Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

Topics in History: Modern Europe

2016 Winter Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

2015 Fall Quarter

Introduction to Western Civilization: Circa 1715 to Present

Paris: Biography of City from 1715 to World War II

2015 Winter Quarter

History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to Present

Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

2014 Fall Quarter

Introduction to Western Civilization: Circa 1715 to Present

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

2014 Winter Quarter

History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to Present

Seminar: Modern European History

2013 Fall Quarter

Introduction to Western Civilization: Circa 1715 to Present

Seminar: Modern European History

2013 Spring Quarter

Introduction to Historical Practice: Variable Topics in European History

History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to Present

2013 Winter Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

2011 Spring Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

2010 Fall Quarter

Introduction to Western Civilization: Circa 1715 to Present

Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

2010 Spring Quarter

History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to Present

Topics in History: Modern Europe

2010 Winter Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

2009 Spring Quarter

History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to Present

Undergraduate Variable Topics Research Seminars: History -- Europe

2009 Winter Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Undergraduate Variable Topics Research Seminars: History -- Europe

2008 Spring Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Undergraduate Variable Topics Research Seminars: History -- Europe

2007 Fall Quarter

Introduction to Historical Practice: Variable Topics in European History

Colloquium for Entering Graduate Students in Modern European History

2007 Spring Quarter

History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to the Present

2007 Winter Quarter

Seminar: Modern European History

2006 Fall Quarter

Seminar: Modern European History

2006 Spring Quarter

Topics in History: Modern Europe

2006 Winter Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Undergraduate Variable Topics Seminars: Europe

Topics in History: Modern Europe

2005 Spring Quarter

Introduction to Historical Practice: Variable Topics in European History

History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to the Present

2005 Winter Quarter

History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

Previous Courses by Course

HIST 124B
History of France: France, 1715 to 1871

2019 Winter Quarter

2018 Winter Quarter

2016 Winter Quarter

2014 Fall Quarter

2013 Winter Quarter

2011 Spring Quarter

2010 Winter Quarter

2009 Winter Quarter

2008 Spring Quarter

2006 Winter Quarter

2005 Winter Quarter

HIST C187O
Topics in Historiography: World History

2019 Winter Quarter

HIST C200F
Topics in Historiography: World History

2019 Winter Quarter

HIST 1C
Introduction to Western Civilization: Circa 1715 to Present

2018 Fall Quarter

2017 Fall Quarter

2015 Fall Quarter

2014 Fall Quarter

2013 Fall Quarter

2010 Fall Quarter

HIST 204A
Departmental Seminar: Approaches, Methods, Debates, Practices

2018 Fall Quarter

HIST 191O
Capstone Seminar: History -- World History

2018 Winter Quarter

HIST 191C
Capstone Seminar: History -- Europe

2017 Fall Quarter

2016 Fall Quarter

2016 Winter Quarter

2015 Winter Quarter

2013 Winter Quarter

2011 Spring Quarter

2010 Fall Quarter

2010 Winter Quarter

HIST 201E
Topics in History: Modern Europe

2016 Fall Quarter

2010 Spring Quarter

2006 Spring Quarter

2006 Winter Quarter

HNRS 168
Paris: Biography of City from 1715 to World War II

2015 Fall Quarter

HIST 124C
History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to Present

2015 Winter Quarter

2014 Winter Quarter

2013 Spring Quarter

2010 Spring Quarter

2009 Spring Quarter

HIST M230B
Seminar: Modern European History

2014 Winter Quarter

2007 Winter Quarter

HIST M230A
Seminar: Modern European History

2013 Fall Quarter

2006 Fall Quarter

HIST 97C
Introduction to Historical Practice: Variable Topics in European History

2013 Spring Quarter

2007 Fall Quarter

2005 Spring Quarter

HIST 191C
Undergraduate Variable Topics Research Seminars: History -- Europe

2009 Spring Quarter

2009 Winter Quarter

2008 Spring Quarter

HIST 225
Colloquium for Entering Graduate Students in Modern European History

2007 Fall Quarter

HIST 124C
History of France: Making of Modern France, 1871 to the Present

2007 Spring Quarter

2005 Spring Quarter

HIST 191C
Undergraduate Variable Topics Seminars: Europe

2006 Winter Quarter