Sarah Griswold

My scholarship focuses on European cultural history in the 20th century, particularly in a transnational context.  Trained in history, French Studies, and museum studies, I approach my work with an interdisciplinary framework.

My first book is a history of cultural heritage work in the French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon, which was created at the end of World War I. Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate is a wide-ranging study of how multiple communities used historical religious objects--Sumerian votives, Roman temples, medieval mosaics in Damascus, and more--to navigate the new Middle East and Europe after 1918, which were both irrevocably changed by WWI. By zooming in on this particular story, my research underscores the use of religious cultural objects to affect international politics and shape colonial regimes. Broadly the book shows how cultural heritage was used to justify the contentious terms of late colonialism, and to resist it.

That research is part of my specific scholarly agenda on European heritage politics across the twentieth century, as evidenced by my next two major projects: the history of requisitioning French historical monuments during World War II and a history of a spike in art crime in Europe in the 1960s-1970s. Both projects are interdisciplinary and influenced by material culture theory. All my projects are guided by my belief in the humanities: that it is intrinsically worthwhile to study the human condition as humanists do, and that our work is useful--especially now.