Modern & Contemporary France

For those interested in publishing articles about the politics, culture (books, film, cuisine…), and history of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century France

This international journal claims that it “offers a scholarly view of all aspects of France from 1789 to the present day,” but its focus is more on the present day than it is on the late 18th and 19th centuries. In it, you’ll find many articles on the current French political climate as well as a variety devoted to 20th- and 21st-century novels. Every other issue of the journal (it publishes four issues a year) has a special theme. Recent special issues have been devoted to a diverse range of topics: ‘68; Zazie in the Metro; “France’s Other Sexual Minorities”; and “Industrial French Food and Its Critics.” The topics of the journal’s other articles are relatively eclectic and some are quite surprising, notably “La mode du ping-pong en France en 1902.”

The journal’s most cited article in the past three years is called “The Gilets Jaunes protests: mobilisation without third-party support.” As you can tell from this article’s title, the journal seems to adhere to French rules of capitalization rather than anglophone ones. Moreover, articles are all written in standard British English (“mobiliSation”). The editors of the journal teach at universities in the UK, but many American and French scholars are published in it. While the majority of authors are professors, a few graduate students have been published in the past five years.

According to Google Scholar, this journal is the second most popular in the field of French Studies, right behind French Politics. This isn’t particularly surprising since it publishes articles on cutting-edge topics. While its articles are generally well-written and well-edited, some suffer from a lack of coherent structure and few include clear “statements of significance.” There does not seem to be a set formula for being published in the journal, but authors who write about popular new cultural objects or trending political topics appear to have a much greater chance of getting published.

Most introductions are about 4-paragraphs-long, but some (especially those in special issues) are only a paragraph long. Arguments appear in the last paragraph of introductions and are usually summarized in one sentence

Bibliography:

• “D’un roman plus que le nom: Édouard Louis’s Histoire de la violence, a reflexive, gay novel”;
• “Places and spaces of contested identity in the memorials and monuments of Paris”;
• “‘Mon callalou’: Maryse Condé writing herself as female cook”

Information Useful for Submission:

Journal website

Issues per year: Four

Current issue: Vol. 30 (2022)

Word limit: 8000 words or less

Average word count: 7,500

Articles per year: 20-26

Citations per article: 40 or less

Endnotes per article: 10 or less

Style manual: Chicago Manual of Style 17th ed author-date style

SJR rank: 0.200 (2021)

Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Relevant editors: Oliver Davis and David Lees

Online? In print and online

Submission guidelines (Note: This journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts to manage the peer-review process. If you haven’t submitted a paper to this journal before, you will need to create an account in ScholarOne. Authors must submit abstracts in both French and English; authors should use British (-ise) spellings)