From the Editors

With this volume of French Historical Studies, we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for French Historical Studies. The present issue, "New Perspectives on Modern Paris," continues the important tradition, established by our predecessors, John J. Contreni and James R. Farr, of publishing occasional special issues under the supervision of guest editors on themes of potential interest to historians in all fields of French history. The considerable research on the history of Paris, both inside and outside France, suggested to us the possibility of a collaborative Franco-Anglophone special issue that would highlight innovative work on both sides of the Atlantic. To that end, we departed from our ordinary practice of open submissions for special issues, which until recently has attracted few French scholars, and instead adopted a procedure of invited submissions.

The guest editors whom we chose to oversee this issue proved especially suited to this approach, since their contacts with French and Anglophone scholars in urban studies are extensive and cross the usual thematic divides of cultural, social, and political history. We are grateful to Rosemary Wakeman and Charles Rearick for the good humor and dedication with which they met and overcame the special challenges associated with a Franco-Anglophone collaboration and an invited but still peer-reviewed collection.

The intellectual contribution of both guest editors to this special issue for teachers and scholars is also immense. In his artful introduction "Paris Revisited," Rearick underscores the historiographical debates that inform the issue�s thematic organization. His conceptual overview, in addition to guiding readers, will interest anyone developing a course on the history of Paris. His concluding reßections on the variety of approaches adopted in recent book-length studies of Paris suggest still other pedagogical possibilities. Wakeman�s article, "Nostalgic Modernism and the Invention of Paris in the Twentieth Century," greatly expands our understanding of planning in Paris from the 1920s to the Fifth Republic. Former and currentmembers, respectively, of the editorial board of French Historical Studies, Rearick and Wakeman have provided an outstanding addition to the growing collection of special issues of our journal.