Gisèle Sapiro
Émile Durkheim - Fellow
Gisèle Sapiro is Professor of Sociology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Senior Researcher at the CNRS (Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique). Her areas of interest are the sociology of culture, intellectuals, the circulation of ideas, the sociology of law, political sociology and the history and epistemology of the social sciences. She is a member of the Academia Europeae and was awarded the CNRS Silver Medal in 2021 and the Humboldt Research Award in 2024. Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages.
During her time at the Émile Durkheim Research Center for Crisis Analysis, Prof. Sapiro will conduct research on cultural crises and, together with Prof. Gephart, lead a summer school on “Crisis Analysis - What we can learn from the classical theories of Durkheim and Bourdieu”.
Academic Profile
Gisèle Sapiro (born 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris) is an award-winning pioneer in the field of literary sociology, combining cultural-historical studies with highly innovative research methods. Sapiro received her doctorate from Pierre Bourdieu with a thesis on the political positioning of French writers under German occupation during the Second World War. Her work is part of Bourdieu's tradition of thought and makes a significant contribution to the question of the autonomy of literary and intellectual life, to the relationships between literature, law and politics and to the understanding of the social conditions for the international dissemination of literary and scientific works.
Winner of the Gay Lussac-Humboldt Prize 2023
Silver medal of the CNRS 2021
Bronze medal of the CNRS 2000
Francqui Chair of K-Leuven University for Translation Studies 2017-2018.
Legion of Honor, 2016.
Member of Academia Europae, Literary and Theatrical Studies section, 2015.
Responsible for an ongoing research project on literary agents since 2017 (IRIS-PSL “Creation, cognition and society” and EHESS funding).
Responsible for an agreement with MOtif on “the professional recognition of writers”. (2015-2017)
Responsible for an agreement with the French Institute on “Translating human and social sciences” (2012-2013).
Responsible for a research agreement with the French Ministry of Culture on “Cultures croisées: les obstacles à la traduction des grandes œuvres” (2009-2011).
Responsible for a research agreement with the MOtif (Observatoire du livre d'Ile-de-France) on literary exchanges between Paris and New York in the age of globalization (2009).
Participation in a contract with the French Ministry of Culture on diversity in the cultural industries, coordinated by MSH Paris-Nord (2006-2007).
Leader of a partner team in an IFA of the Ministry of Research on “Changes in the cultural, information and communication industries”, coordinated by MSH Paris-Nord (2004-2007).
Head of an IFA of the Ministry of Research in the framework of the program “Terrains, techniques, théorie” on the theme “Translation as a vector of international cultural exchange: circulation of literary and social science books and changes in France's position on the world publishing market from 1980 to 2004” (2004-2007).
Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur mondial ? Le champ littéraire transnational (Gallimard/Seuil/EHESS 2024).
The Sociology of Literature (Stanford UP, 2023) – original ed. : La Sociologie de la littérature, La Découverte, « Repères » [2014, 2024]
« Structural crises vs. situations of (political) crisis: A Bourdieuan approach », Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, vol. LXIII, n° 2, 2022, p. 299-321.
« Die Macht der Übersetzungen. Selektion und Zirkulation geisteswissenschaftlicher Bücher im Zeitalter der Globalisierung », Mittelweg, n°36, 2022, 48-77.
Les Ecrivains et la politique en France, de l’affaire Dreyfus à la guerre d’Algérie (Seuil, 2018).
Peut-on dissocier l’œuvre de l’auteur ? (Seuil, 2020 ; enhanced ed. « Points », 2024).
Des mots qui tuent. La responsabilité de l’intellectuel en temps de crise, 1944-1953 (Points 2020).
French Writers’ War 1940-1953 (Duke UP 2014) – original ed.: La Guerre des écrivains, Fayard 1999.
La Responsabilité de l’écrivain. Litérature, droit et morale en France, XIX-XXIe siècle (Seuil 2011).
« Transformationen des intellektuellen Feldes in Frankreich seit den 1970er Jahren und der Bedeutungsgewinn von Rechtsintellektuellen », in I. Gilcher-Holtey et E. Oberloskamp ed., Warten auf Godot? - Intellektuelle seit den 1960er Jahren, Munich, De Gruyter, 2020, p. 161-174.
Ed. Ideas on the move in the Social Sciences and Humanities: The International Circulation of Paradigms and Theorists (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)
Ed. Dictionnaire international Bourdieu (CNRS Eds. 2020)
Ed. The Routledge Handbook of the History and Sociology of Ideas (Routledge 2023).