Background
Elisa Camiscioli writes about immigration to and from France, trafficking and illicit migration, and the racial and sexual politics of modern France and its empire. She is the author of Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations (Cambridge University Press, 2024), a transnational history of women, sexuality, and migration that won the Society for French Historical Studies Gilbert Chinard Book Prize. Her first book, Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Duke University Press, 2009), examined the centrality of empire, corporeality, racialization, and intimacy to French citizenship and gender identities. Both projects were supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Camiscioli is a recipient of both the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities and the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Select Publications
- Selling French Sex: Prostitution, Trafficking, and Global Migrations (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
- Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Duke University Press, 2009).
- “Coercion and Choice: The ‘Traffic in Women’ between France and Argentina in the Early Twentieth Century,” French Historical Studies 42, no. 3 (2019): 483–507.
- “Demand: Biological Imperative, Deviant Desire, or Cultural Myth?” (with Eva Payne), Radical History Review 149 (2024): 111–142.
- “La «traite des femmes», une histoire de migrations (France-Cuba, début du XXe siècle),” Clio. Femmes, genre, histoire 52 (2020): 97–117.
Education
- PhD, MA, University of Chicago
- BA, University of Pennsylvania
Research Interests
- Migration
- Modern France
- Modern Italy
- Gender History
- Sex Work
Teaching Interests
- Trafficking
- Global Migrations
- Race and Racism in Modern Europe
- Gender and Sexuality in Modern Europe
- Sexual Labor
Awards
- State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, 2026
- Society for French Historical Studies Gilbert Chinard Book Prize, 2024
- Society for French Historical Studies William Koren, Jr. Article Prize, 2020
- Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Article Prize, 2020
- National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2020–2021
- State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2008