@newspaperarticle {67676,
	title = {History in the Making},
	year = {2011},
	month = {Feb 3, 2011},
	publisher = {Harvard Gazette},
	abstract = {The seeds of Mary Lewis{\textquoteright}
 fascination with France were planted early. Her father spent a few 
years there as a young man, working in the offices of the Marshall Plan,
 so she grew up hearing a steady stream of stories about that country.
{\textquotedblleft}I had never been out of North America,{\textquotedblright} said the newly tenured 
professor of history, {\textquotedblleft}but when my father would talk about France{\textquoteright}s 
history, it sparked an interest that is still with me.{\textquotedblright}The geopolitically tense Reagan administration years were her 
political coming-of-age, and the native Californian went to college 
wanting to understand the Cold War, studying international relations 
when she attended the University of California, Davis.~ She spent her junior year abroad in France, becoming increasingly interested in the diversity of its society.The final seed that would eventually bear Lewis{\textquoteright} intellectual fruit 
was planted during a political science class she took upon her return 
from studying abroad. It was November 1989, the month the Berlin Wall 
fell.{\textquotedblleft}We were discussing the theory of mutually assured destruction,{\textquotedblright} she 
said. {\textquotedblleft}A young man raised his hand and asked the professor, {\textquoteleft}Can we talk
 about Berlin?{\textquoteright} The professor was completely thrown. The real world was 
confronting his theoretical model, and he didn{\textquoteright}t know what to do.{\textquotedblright}Lewis remembers the professor dismissing the question by telling the student to read The New York Times. That, she said, was the moment she knew she wanted to study history.{\textquotedblleft}At that point, history had suddenly caught up to political science,{\textquotedblright}
 she said. {\textquotedblleft}I realized you really needed history to understand 
politics.{\textquotedblright}After graduating from the University of California, Davis, and before beginning a Ph.D. program in history at New York University, Lewis spent two years working for the U.S. Department of Education in its Office for Civil Rights, an experience she said greatly affected how she studies and thinks about history today.{\textquotedblleft}I learned a lot about bureaucracy and the layers of bureaucracy,{\textquotedblright} 
she said. {\textquotedblleft}If I wrote a letter, it would go through six different levels
 of editing and end up with someone else{\textquoteright}s signature on it.{\textquotedblright}{\textquotedblleft}I got a sense of how policy and decisions are layered. It helped me become the kind of historian that I am today.{\textquotedblright}Lewis{\textquoteright} improbable interest in bureaucracy informed her first book, {\textquotedblleft}The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918-1940{\textquotedblright}
 (Stanford University Press, 2007), recently translated into French as 
{\textquotedblleft}Les Fronti{\`e}res de la R{\'e}publique{\textquotedblright} ({\'E}ditions Agone, 2010). The book 
demonstrates how local actions {\textemdash} far removed from Parisian edicts {\textemdash} 
redefined the boundaries between French citizens and outsiders in the 
early decades of the 20th century. By focusing on the limits of 
legislation in a pluralistic society, the book challenges the common 
vision of France as a highly centralized nation.{\textquotedblleft}We tend to think of France as a centralized country with uniform 
rights decreed in Paris,{\textquotedblright} Lewis said. {\textquotedblleft}But the actions of immigrants 
themselves in the provinces, by forcing officials to recognize that they
 were going to stay in the country, instigated an expansion of those 
rights. In a sense, today{\textquoteright}s diverse French society is a product of that 
history.{\textquotedblright}Today, Lewis{\textquoteright} studies are intersecting anew with current events: She 
is working on a book about Tunisia, using the case of the little-studied
 French protectorate there to study how imperial rivalry affected French
 colonial governance from the 1880s to the 1930s. Pent-up public unrest 
in the North African country exploded and brought down its government 
last month.{\textquotedblleft}Having researched my forthcoming book there, I was surprised that 
the protests would lead so suddenly to a change in regime,{\textquotedblright} she said of 
Tunisia{\textquoteright}s overthrow of its president. {\textquotedblleft}It{\textquoteright}s a police state.~ People have
 conditioned themselves to be very guarded in conversation when speaking
 about politics because they know they{\textquoteright}re being watched, so the fact 
that they would have the nerve to protest as they did is remarkable.{\textquotedblright}Lewis is also planning a new research project on intercolonial movement by studying colonial passports.{\textquotedblleft}We think of these societies as being hermetically sealed, because we
 tend to study them from an imperialist point of view, but in fact 
people were on the move, and we can see challenges to imperial control 
based on these varied movements.{\textquotedblright}One of Lewis{\textquoteright} favorite parts of working at Harvard is interacting with students.{\textquotedblleft}They make you think,{\textquotedblright} she said. {\textquotedblleft}Even if you{\textquoteright}ve taught a class 
before, you{\textquoteright}ll get something new out of it because of the student 
participation. This is positive feedback on a whole other level.{\textquotedblright}},
	url = {http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/02/history-in-the-making/},
	author = {Lewis, Mary D.}
}
