Princeton University

Philip Nord studies the political and cultural history of modern France. After earning his B.A. from Columbia University in 1971, Professor Nord went to Balliol College, Oxford University on a Kellett Fellowship to study politics (B. Phil. in 1973). He began teaching at Princeton in 1981 and received his Ph.D. in French history from Columbia the following year. Professor Nord’s first book, Paris Shopkeepers and the Politics of Resentment (1986), follows the birth and political evolution of an influential small-business protest movement in late-19th-century Paris. In The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (1995), Nord traces the slow advance of democratic ideas and practices through the institutions of French civil society to explain how and why a lasting republican government took root in France in the 19th century. Nord’s most recent book, Impressionists and Politics: Art and Democracy in the Nineteenth Century (2000) examines the intersection between Impressionism and republicanism. He is also the coeditor with Nancy Bermeo of Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe (2000). Professor Nord was Chair of the History Department from 1995 to 2001. He is affiliated with the European Politics and Society Program. In 2005 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to research his next book.

Professor Nord's next book examines the remaking of the French state at the Liberation (1944-1946).  He argues that many of the reforms associated with the era--reforms that reshaped both the nation's economic and cultural life--can in fact be traced back to the 1930s and to the Vichy years.
 

Professor Nord teaches undergraduate courses on modern France (1815 to the present) and graduate courses on modern France and modern Europe.