I am a cultural historian, and my main fields of interest are empire, legacies of empire, and war and conflict studies. I read all my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Warwick University. I initially read French and European Literature, but from this more or less ‘literary’ undergraduate background, I went on to major in political discourses at MA level, and then attempted to combine both historico-political studies with literary-cultural ones in my doctoral thesis on French colonialism in Indochina. This ‘cumulative’ approach to history continues to inform both my research and the ways in which I teach my units. If you do take my units, expect to extend your critical and analytical skills across multiple disciplinary boundaries, as I work with a variety of cultural media, including film, documentary, posters, propaganda, fiction, architecture, art, journalism, and photography.

I continue to write about empire, French colonialism and France’s colonial wars, but am currently completing a book about the French Foreign Legion, and have recently been working on both colonial troops and the film Indigènes. I’m also interested in the study of masculinities, particularly military masculinities, and many of my current research projects reflect this crossover of interests between war studies and colonial studies.

I have taught at the universities of Nanterre, Warwick, Sussex and Bristol; and I came to a chair in Swansea in 2006-7.

I am currently Co-Editor of the Journal of War and Culture Studies, Associate Editor of French Cultural Studies, Member of Editorial Board of the Francophone Journal of Postcolonial Studies and of the University of Wales Press, French and Francophone series, and Advisory Board Member of H-French-Colonial.

Major Current Research Projects

‘Tianjin Under Nine Flags: Colonialism in Comparative Perspective’

‘Resonance and Retrospection: Sensory Perceptions of War’

‘Camouflage: Militarised Representations’

‘French Decolonisation in Transnational Perspective’

‘Detritus, Degeneracy, Decadence: Alternative Visions of Empire’.

‘Bat d’Af: Disciplining and Punishing in the French Empire’

Publications

Available Online

‘The French Foreign Legion: Forging Transnational Identities and Meanings’ French Cultural Studies.2006; 17: 3, 269-284.

‘Colonial Humanism in the 1930s: The Case of Andrée Viollis', French Cultural Studies, 2006,17: 2, 189-205.

‘The French Foreign Legion’

‘French Indochina’

‘Living the Dream? Settler responses to Indochina’ in Journal of Romance Studies, 5:1, 2005.

‘Dien Bien Phu: fifty years on’, Modern and Contemporary France, 12:4, November 2004  445-57.

‘Stop la Violence: Responses to delinquency and Violence’ in Modern and Contemporary France, 8:1, February 2001, pp. 91-9.

Major Recent Publications

France in Indochina (New York, Oxford: Berg, 2001)

See reviews at Amazon.com:

"Cooper presents numerous interesting and tantalizing ideas that should stimulate other area specialists." --Choice

"Cooper provides researchers of colonial Indochina with a profoundly illuminating framework, and makes an invaluable contribution to the development of French postcolonial studies." --ASCALF Bulletin

"A strong contribution to (a] nouvelle vague of French colonial history ... [It is a] rich volume." --H-France

"Cooper is to be congratulated on having produced a fascinating and highly readable book that has opened up a rich field for further research." --Journal of European Area Studies

"A book that ought to be read by anyone interested in the French colonial encounter with Indochina. Cooper comes at the issue from a fresh angle, and fresh angles nearly always produce fresh insights" --History

Other Selected Publications

Cooper, N., and Chafer, A., (eds) “Colonialism and Postcolonialism”, Special Issue, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, vol 11, no. 2, 2003.

‘(En)gendering Indochina: Feminisation and Female Figurings in French Colonial Discourses’, Women’s International Studies Forum, vol. 23, no. 6, December 2000, pp. 749-59.

‘Urban Planning and Architecture in Colonial Indochina’, French Cultural Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, February 2000, pp. 75-99.

‘Heroes and Martyrs: the Changing Mythical status of the French Army during the Franco-Indochinese War’, in Kelly, D., and Holman, V., France at War in the Twentieth Century: Myth, Metaphor, Propaganda (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2000), pp. 126-141. ISBN 1-57181-701-8/770-8

‘Investigating Indochina: Travel Journalism and France’s Civilising Mission’, in Burdett, C., and Duncan, D., Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2002), pp. 173-185. ISBN: 1-57181-810-3/501-5.

‘French Indochina’, in Speake, J., (ed) The Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia (New York, London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2002), pp. 468-9 ISBN: 1-57958-2478

‘French Colonial Thought’, in Murray, C., (ed) Encyclopedia of Modern French Thought (New York, London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004), pp. 234-37  ISBN: 1-57958-384-9

‘Making Indochina French: Promoting the Empire through Education’, Evans, M., (ed.) Empire and Popular Culture (London: Palgrave, 2004), pp. 131-147. ISBN: 0-333-79181-9.

‘Disturbing the Colonial Order: Dystopia and Disillusionment in Colonial Indochina’ in Robson, K., Cultural Representations of Indochina (Lexington: Lexington University Press, 2005), pp. 79-94. ISBN 0-73910-839-5

“‘Days of Glory’? Veterans, Reparation and National Memory”, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 1:1, Autumn 2007.

Forthcoming

The French Foreign Legion: Myths, Maculinities Mystique, (UWP/University of Chicago Press, 2009).

Special issue of French Cultural Studies on Baudrillard (Autumn 2008)

‘La Mère-Patrie and Maternalism’ in Fischer-Tine and Gehrmann, Empires and Boundaries (New York: Routledge, 2008).