Events

Ruth HARRIS - The Dreyfus Affair: Beyond the Orthodoxy

Created by Frédéric Viguier (See other events)
  • Oct 27, 2010 from 3:00pm to 4:30pm
  • Location: La Maison Française of New York University
  • Latest Activity: Aug 21, 2019
Ruth Harris is a Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at the New College (Oxford University), a CUF Lecturer and Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law and Society in the Fin de Siècle (1989), Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (1999), Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century (Metropolitan Books, 2010).Abstract:In 1894, Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was wrongfully convicted of being a spy for Germany and imprisoned on Devil's Island. Over the following years, attempts to correct this injustice tore France apart. But how did a fairly obscure miscarriage of justice come to break up families in bitterness, set off anti-Semitic riots across the French empire, and nearly trigger a coup d'état? How did a violently reactionary, obscurantist attitude become so powerful in a country that saw itself as the home of enlightenment? Why did the battle over a junior army officer occupy the foremost writers and philosophers of the age? What drove the anti-Dreyfusards to persist in their efforts even after it became clear that much of the prosecution's evidence was faked? Drawing upon thousands of previously unread and unconsidered sources, Ruth Harris offers the first in-depth history of both sides in the Affair, showing how complex interlocking influences—tensions within the military, the clashing demands of justice and nationalism, and a tangled web of friendships and family connections—shaped both the coalition working to free Dreyfus and the formidable alliances seeking to protect the reputation of the army that had convicted him.
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