People

Faculty

Modern French and European social, legal, and political history. Her current research interests center around international and imperial history, the history of rights, and the connections between international relations and everyday local life. She has taught courses on European capitalism, French citizenship and political culture, French colonialism, and nation- and state-building in the modern era, as well as graduate seminars on method. Her book, "The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France" (Stanford University Press, 2007) was a co-winner of the 2008 James Willard Hurst Prize awarded by the Law and Society Association for the best book in sociolegal history. Her current project, “Divided Rule: French Conquest, Tunisian Sovereignty, and the Imperial Game in North Africa,” explores the impact of European imperial rivalry on social life and legal institutions in Tunisia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Lewis has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, among others.

Selected Publications

“Necropoles and Nationality: Land Rights, Burial Rites, and the Development of Tunisian National Consciousness in the 1930s,” Past and Present (forthcoming).
"Geographies of Power: The Tunisian Civic Order, Jurisdictional Politics, and Imperial Rivalry in the Mediterranean, 1881-1935" in The Journal of Modern History (December 2008).
The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918-1940 Stanford University Press (2007)
"The Strangeness of Foreigners: Policing Migration and Nation in Interwar Marseille" in Race in France: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference eds. Herrick Chapman and Laura L. Frader (2004)