An interdisciplinary historian of modern French society, Julie Fette’s research has a strong focus on gender and race. Her first book, Exclusions (Cornell, 2012), examines middle-class discrimination in French society in the professional fields of law and medicine between 1920 and 1945. Shaped by anti-Semitism and xenophobia, lawyers' and doctors' mobilization normalized exclusionary legislation in the last years of the Third Republic and during the Holocaust. In 2021, she co-authored a new edition of Les Français, the beloved and widely-taught French civilization textbook for undergraduates. Fette recently published another monograph, Gender by the Book (Routledge, 2025), which investigates representations of gender in 21st-century French children’s literature. By melding institutional histories of libraries, book clubs and periodicals with analysis of an expansive literary corpus, the book elucidates the social conditions of the circulation of gender representations.

At Rice, Fette is a faculty scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy’s Center for the Middle East and a faculty affiliate of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of the Program in Politics, Law & Social Thought.

Fette is on the editorial boards of French Politics, Culture & Society and Contemporary French Civilization. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2023. Her massive open online course, “America Through Foreign Eyes” (Coursera) has enrolled 19,000 students. The French government recently promoted her as Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes académiques.

Publications

Books

• Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature (New York: Routledge, 2025).
• Les Français, 4th edn. (Indianapolis, IN: Focus/Hackett, 2021). With Jean-François Brière and Laurence Wylie.
• Exclusions: Practicing Prejudice in French Law and Medicine, 1920-1945 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012).

Journal Articles (Selection)

• “French Matters.” French Politics, Culture & Society 42.3 (2025): 101-105.
• “What's in Store for the French Presidential Election in April 2022?” Rice University Baker Institute for Public Policy, issue brief no. 10.19.21 (2021). With William Tsai.
• “Heureux comme stéréotype en France,” La Revue des livres pour enfants 310 (December 2019): 136-43.
• “From Casablanca to Houston: A Family Story,” French Politics, Culture & Society 36/3 (2018), 32-60.
• “Gender and the Role of Talents Hauts in Contemporary French Children’s Literature,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 43 (2018), 285-306.
• “Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the Future of French Studies,” Contemporary French Civilization 41 (2016), 381-95.
• “Acting the Dreyfus Affair: History and Theatre in the French Classroom,” PMLA 126 (2011), 737-45.
• “Apology and the Past in Contemporary France,” French Politics, Culture & Society 26/2 (2008), 78-113.
• “Pride and Prejudice in the Professions: Women Doctors and Lawyers in Third Republic France,” Journal of Women’s History 19/3 (2007), 60-86.

Recent Courses

• FREN 305 The Media in France
• FREN 314 Contemporary French Society
• FREN 320 French Comics
• FREN 322 French Children's Literature
• FREN 326 Banned Books
• FREN 424 Women in France
• FREN 451 America through French Eyes
• FREN 453 Immigration and Citizenship in Contemporary France

Education

• PhD, New York University
• Doctorat, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
• BSFS, Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service

Research Areas

• Gender; Race; Children’s Literature; Postcolonialism; Memory