The use of mother tongues as languages of instruction has become popular in many parts of Africa.
Issouf Sanogo/Getty Images
Bilingual education can improve learning outcomes but it’s important to consider local context.
Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon.’ Napoleon was a prolific legislator who sponsored the Civil Code, later known as the Napoleonic Code.
(Apple TV+)
Ridley Scott’s focus on Napoleon’s tactical triumphs, reckless miscalculations and sexual entanglements neglects his paradoxical legacy as a lawmaker.
Apple TV+ via AP
Napoleon has unleashed a torrent of objections to the film’s historical errors. More important for historians should be whether creative works pass the test of authenticity.
Josephine with her hair in the coiffure à la victime style in Napoleon.
LANDMARK MEDIA/Alamy Stock Photo
A shorn haircut known as the coiffure à la victime, paid tribute to guillotined prisoners whose hair was loped off before execution.
The Hesitant Fiancée by Auguste Toulmouche (1866).
Sotheby's
Why this 1866 painting by French artist Auguste Toulmouche has become an online sensation.
Vanessa Kirby and Joaquin Phoenix as Josephine and Napoleon.
Courtesy of Apple
A historian explains what the relationship between one of the most famous couples in history was really like.
French citizens celebrate Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the country’s 2017 presidential elections.
Lorie Shaull/Flickr
Opposition forces in France are using the president’s unpopularity to push for a new constitution. It’s a dangerous game.
Wellcome Collection
A series of laws voted up in late 1793 enabled the expedited judgement of thousands of people suspected of counterrevolutionary beliefs.
Shutterstock
Archaeologists speculate the first soup might have been made by Neanderthals.
An artist’s depiction of the temple at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz as it would have looked in the first century AD.
Marie Millet, INRAP
There may have been a main god or goddess at many temple sites, but there was a clear tendency to worship a range of deities.
Wikimedia Commons
Michael Meehan’s An Ungrateful Instrument is a vivid, lively novel drawing on the history of French music.
The late Yvonne Fox dressed as legendary pitchforked Welshwoman, Jemima Nicholas.
Nancy Hoyt Belcher/Alamy
The last invasion of Britain involved bungled military plans, sozzled soldiers and a legendary Welshwoman wielding a pitchfork.
Stan
Catherine de’ Medici was Queen of France, the mother of three kings and two queens, and the mother-in-law of Mary, Queen of Scots.
French Education and Youth Minister Pap Ndiaye speaks during a press conference following a weekly cabinet meeting at the Elysée Palace in Paris on June 14, 2022.
Ludovic Marin/AFP
Considered a pioneer of “Black Studies à la française”, Ndiaye’s appointment comes at a time when issues in race and gender have divided the French political class and public opinion.
The Haitian revolution was the first by a former slave colony and was to inspire other emancipation movements across the New World.
The Met
Marie Antoinette has become a symbol of female profligacy made up of as much history as she is of modern film and art.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron (R) and Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari.
Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Africa, home to the largest number of French speakers, plays a key role in the present and future of the French language.
Photo 12/Alamy
France’s good and great are interred in this crypt.
Joséphine Baker, Jo Bouillon and their children, 1959.
Herbert Behrens/Anefo
Out of everything that Josephine Baker accomplished in her life, her child advocacy work is perhaps the most overlooked.
PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive / Alamy
Baker will be the sixth woman, first entertainer and first Black woman to enter after a successful petition from her family and fans.