I am a licensed tour guide, graduate in sociology. I invite you to explore the social, political and cultural history of neighborhoods in Paris and its suburbs, and the minorities who drive their local life. I use archival documents, as well as historical and sociological research. Questions are encouraged.

QUEER PARIS 1

PIGALLE

In Bars and Cabarets : The Other Side of « Gay Paree »

Around the Clichy boulevard, during the Belle Époque and the interwar period, owners of bars and popular cabaret artists created a zone of nightlife for homosexual and lesbian subcultures.

Meeting point: Métro Blanche (line 2)

QUEER PARIS 2

SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS

Queer American Intellectuals’ Left Bank

James Baldwin, Natalie C. Barney, Sylvia Beach… How lesbian and gay intellectuals and artists contributed to a mythic neighborhood, and wrote a crucial chapter of American 20th century literature while in Paris.

Meeting point: Métro Saint-Germain-des-Prés (line 4)

JEWISH HISTORY 1

BELLEVILLE

Belleville’s Jewish Lives

From pre-Holocaust Yiddish Belleville to Sephardi Belleville in the wake of North African decolonization, a history of Jewish presence and immigration in France as seen through the lens of a working-class neighborhood.

Meeting point: Métro Pyrénées (line 11)

JEWISH HISTORY 2

BOURSE & LE SENTIER

The Spoliation of Jewish People by Vichy and the Nazis

A tour between places of power and a working-class neighborhood, to understand economic « aryanization » as a state policy, and outline a micro-history of antisemitic measures and Holocaust victims (1940-1944).

Meeting point: Métro Bourse (line 3)

SAINT-DENIS

Working-Class and Immigrant History and Struggles

A walk through the city center of Saint-Denis to look back at the history of workers’ housing, social movements, and anticolonial struggles in a working-class city of the Parisian suburb’s historic communist « red belt ».

Meeting point: Métro Saint-Denis-Porte-de-Paris (line 13)

PANTIN

A History of Paris’ Industrial Banlieue

Through Pantin, the Ourcq canal conveys the relationship between Paris and its suburb, from the eviction of the working-class and industrial infrastructures in the 19th century, to contemporary gentrification and integration within the capital.

Meeting point: Métro Hoche (line 5)

BELLEVILLE

Histories of Immigration in a Working-Class Neighborhood

A history of interwar and postcolonial immigration, through housing, urban transformations, places of worship, shops, and local memories and struggles, in a gentrified neighborhood.

Meeting point: Métro Pyrénées (line 11)