This handbook assembles a vibrant collection of original scholarship highlighting new and exciting research themes on Paris in the Modern Era. It provides an innovative selection and use of primary sources, broadens the notion of “archive”, and includes diverse voices and multiple perspectives.

The contributors, representing a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, connect specific topics to larger historical questions and extend consideration of Paris beyond the city’s historical limit to the outskirts of the metropolis in the Île-de-France region. The first section includes overview chapters tracing structural evolutions and broad movements as understood through recent historiography. The second section presents essays that take a narrower focus on case studies and key moments of reflection and debate, change and commemoration through specific sites, social phenomena, cultural objects, movements, and representations of Paris in the arts. The authors explore how Paris has been imagined, constructed, and mythologized from the outside – by tourists, immigrants, and those separate from the circles of power; as well as from within – by political, administrative and cultural institutions.

Geared towards advanced undergrads, graduate students and postgraduate researchers, this handbook contributes to readers’ understanding of France’s place in the world and French society, culture, and policy by telling the story of modern Paris in all its complexity.