Getting Started With the Society For French Historical Studies
The Society for French Historical Studies is the main professional organization for scholars working on French history at any period. If you are a graduate student or early-career researcher, joining it is basically free professional insurance. You get access to their journal French Historical Studies, the newsletter French Historians, conference travel grants, and a mailing list that occasionally posts job announcements before they hit major boards. That last point alone is worth the membership fee for most people. Membership costs around $55 per year for regular members and roughly $25 for graduate students. The student rate gets you everything except the voting rights at annual meetings, which honestly doesn't matter if you are just there to read and network. Payment goes through their website, and you usually receive your login credentials within a week. Sometimes longer during peak academic conference season in late summer when everyone submits at once. Their flagship journal, French Historical Studies, publishes peer-reviewed articles on French history from the Middle Ages through the present. It comes out quarterly. The submission process is handled through their portal, and expect a first-round decision somewhere between four and eight months out. I submitted a piece on rural credit networks in late 19th-century Brittany once, and it sat in review for seven months. The feedback was thorough, but if you have a timeline pressure, factor that in.
They also run an annual conference that rotates locations. Most years it is in the United States, sometimes Canada. The 2024 meeting was in Washington DC, 2025 moved to Montreal. Paper proposals are due about five months before the event. A practical detail most people miss: you do not need to be a member to present at the conference, but non-members pay a higher registration fee. If you are submitting a paper, consider joining just for that year rather than paying the non-member rate. One thing the SFHS does that other historical societies do not do as well is their mentorship program. You can sign up as a mentee or mentor through the membership portal, and they pair you based on period and geographic specialization. I was paired with someone working on pre-revolutionary fiscal history, which was not my area at all. It ended up being useful when a reviewer on my own paper asked a question I would never have thought to address without that broader perspective. The program runs on an annual cycle, so you can opt out each year if the match is bad. Their online resource page links to the Register of French Historians, which is a directory of people working in the field. It is not a substitute for the AHA directory, but it is more specialized. If you are trying to find someone who works on Algerian-era economic policy specifically, this is where you look. It updates annually, though I have noticed the entry for a few senior scholars was missing entirely in recent years because they never bothered to confirm their information.
Here is the part nobody mentions: the SFHS has a small editorial office that handles correspondence, but they are not known for quick turnarounds on administrative questions. I once emailed them about a duplicate charge on my membership renewal and waited three weeks for a response. The workaround was calling their office directly during their stated business hours, which are Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. The phone person resolved it in about ten minutes. The email chain went nowhere for days. Another thing to know is that the SFHS partners with several other organizations for joint sessions at the AHA annual meeting. If you see a session co-sponsored by the SFHS and the French colonial history group, for example, those tend to be the ones where you can present without being a full SFHS member at the time, depending on the session rules. Check the program guide carefully before you assume you need membership for every affiliated event. If you are not yet in graduate school but want to access their materials, some university libraries provide on-site access to French Historical Studies through JSTOR or Project MUSE. You will not get the newsletter or conference benefits, but reading a few issues before committing to membership is reasonable. I would suggest downloading two or three recent articles on topics outside your specialization just to gauge the quality bar. The journal tends toward well-sourced, theoretically engaged work, and the rejection rate is high enough that publishing there carries weight on the job market.
Get the Full Details
The membership portal at sfhs.org handles everything: renewals, profile updates, conference registration, and mentorship sign-ups. There is no mobile app. The website works fine on a phone browser, but it is not optimized for small screens. I usually just use the desktop version on my laptop to avoid formatting issues when filling out forms. Bottom line, it is a solid organization for anyone seriously engaged with French history as a field. It will not make your career for you, but it will connect you to the right people and resources faster than most alternatives. The main drawback is that it is US-centric in its operations and conference locations, which can be a barrier for researchers based in Europe who want to attend in person. If you are overseas, their online symposia and virtual events are the closest thing they offer, though those have been sporadic since the pandemic window closed out.
