Translation on the Main: The Social Life of Language in the French Maritime World during the First Age of Globalization

Paul Cohen is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto.  After completing his Ph.D. at Princeton, he first taught at the Université Paris-8 (Vincennes-St Denis), before joining the University of Toronto in 2005.  A historian of early modern France, he pursues research interests in a range of distinct areas: the formation of nation-states; the social history of languages; and early modern empire.  His first book, Kingdom of Babel: The Making of a National Language in France, 1400-1815, is forthcoming with Cornell University Press.  He is currently working on two book projects: a history of the mediation of linguistic difference in French North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and a history of the linguistic cultures of the early modern maritime world.  He has also published on issues of contemporary concern in France, including higher education in modern France, postwar state economic planning, and the history of food and wine. Paul is currently the Director of the Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World at the University of Toronto.