Dominique Kalifa


Dominique Kalifa was a French historian, columnist and professor.
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Early life

Kalifa was born in Vichy and attended the local École normale supérieure at Saint-Cloud.
Under the supervision of Michelle Perrot, he undertook postgraduate research and received his doctorate in 1994.

Career

Kalifa was professor at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne and director of the Centre of 19th Century History, and a member of the Institut universitaire de France. He also taught at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris from 2008 to 2015, and was several times visiting scholar at New York University, Brigham Young University and the University of St Andrews.
A student of Michelle Perrot, he specialised in the history of crime, transgression, social control, and mass culture in 19th and early 20th century France and Europe.
From 1990, he was also columnist for the French newspaper Libération. His study about the underworld and its role in the Western imagination is now translated into Portuguese, Spanish and forthcoming in English.
His Véritable Histoire de la Belle Epoque, published in 2017, won the Eugène Colas Prize from the Académie française.
He also worked on a project about love, Paris and the topographical imagination. He has been described as a specialist in the bas fonds and social imagination.

Selected works

L'Encre et le Sang. Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Époque, Fayard, Paris, 1995.Naissance de la police privée, Plon, Paris, 2000.La Culture de masse en France, tome 1 1860–1930, La Découverte, Paris, 2001.Vidal le tueur de femmes. Une biographie sociale, Perrin, Paris, 2001.Imaginaire et sensibilités au e siècle, Creaphis, Paris, 2005.Crime et culture au e siècle, Perrin, Paris, 2005.L'Enquête judiciaire en Europe au e siècle, Creaphis, Paris, 2007. Le Commissaire de police au e siècle , Publications de la Sorbonne, 2008.Crimen y cultura de masas en Francia, siglos XIX-XX, Instituto Mora, Mexico, 2008. Biribi. Les bagnes coloniaux de l'armée française, Paris, Perrin, 2009.La Civilisation du journal. Histoire culturelle et littéraire de la presse au XIXe siècle, Nouveau Monde, Paris, 2011.Les bas-fonds. Histoire d'un imaginaire, Seuil, Paris, 2013.Atlas du crime à Paris, du Moyen Age à nos jours, Paris, Parigramme, 2015.
  • La Véritable histoire de la Belle Époque, Paris, Fayard, 2017.
  • Tu entreras dans le siècle en lisant Fantômas, Paris, Vendémiaire, 2017.
  • Paris. Une histoire érotique d'Offenbach aux sixties, Paris, Payot, 2018.
In English : "Crime Scenes: Criminal Topography and Social Imaginary in Nineteenth Century Paris", French Historical Studies, vol. 27, n° 1, 2004, p. 175-194; "Criminal Investigators at the Fin-de-siècle", Yale French Studies, n° 108, 2005, p. 36-47; "What is now cultural history about?", in Robert Gildea and Anne Simonin, Writing Contemporary History, London, Hodder Education, 2008, p. 47-56; « The Press », in E. Berenson, V. Duclert & C. Prochasson, The French Republic. History, Values, Debates, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2011, p. 189-196; "Minotaur", Journal of Modern History, vol. 84, n° 4, 2012, p. 980-982; "Naming the Century: Chrononyms of the 19th Century", Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle, n° 52, 2016; "An Informal History of Herbert Asbury's Underworld", Medias19, 2018; Vice, Crime, and Poverty. How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld, Columbia University Press, 2019.

Filmography

Death

Kalifa died by suicide in Brugheas, his home town, at the age of 63; in the afternoon, as per the Libération report.