This article analyses the reconfiguration of power relationships within the university of Besançon between 1968 and 1971, during the implementation of the Faure Law. By abolishing the old faculties in favour of UERs (university teaching and research units) and introducing student participation, the reform upset an institutional balance inherited from the 19th century. In Besançon, a small university marked by strong disciplinary traditions, this change became a real battleground. The deans of arts and sciences, Pierre Lévêque and Jean Thiébaut, defended their autonomy against Rector Yves Pironneau and the newer faculties of law and medicine, which were perceived as being favoured by the state. Tensions over representation on councils, budget control and the allocation of premises reflected a rivalry between old and new disciplines, but also between centralisation and local autonomy. Student trade unions, polarised between communists and Trotskyists, reinforced these divisions. The election of President Thiébaut in 1971 marked a victory for the “historic” faculties, and the conflicts shifted to the representatives of the State. Thus, the creation of the University of Besançon revealed less a modernisation than a restructuring of power: the former deans became presidents, the political balance of power (left/right, rectorate/university) became fixed, and the faculty‑based approach provided an enduring structure for the institutional identity of the University of Franche‑Comté.
As the faculty of sciences in Orsay was built outside Paris in a peri‑urban environment, it went through May 1968 without major troubles. However, it did not remain isolated from the debates and reform processes. Its dean Georges Poitou plays a major role in the creation of a new establishment that was meant to bring together the academic centres located south of Paris. Because it gathered heterogeneous entities, the statutes of the newly found Paris‑Sud University created a decentralized system with a relatively weak presidency, contrary to the hopes of Dean Poitou.
The Science faculties were the first French faculties to face mass university enrollment. They welcomed 13,000 students in 1938‑1939 and surpassed 100,000 in 1963‑1964. Their deans were thus the first to deal with cracks in institutional structures. In search of solutions, the deans became involved in the reform movement that took shape in the early 1950s. This article examines this mobilization, its participants, its challenges, its initiatives, and the places where they occurred. These include the informal Assembly of Deans of Science Faculties, which emerged in 1936 and was revived by 1952; the Mouvement national pour le développement scientifique (MNDS), established in 1957 and led by Marc Zamansky, dean of the Paris Faculty of Sciences and the de facto spokesperson for his peers; and the broader, even heterogeneous, Association d’études pour l’expansion de la recherche scientifique (AEERS).
The governance of faculties and universities reformed in the years 1885‑1896 remained in place until 1968. Within a system controlled by the state and by professors alone, it established a dual leadership structure with the dean heading the faculty and the rector of the academy, appointed by the minister, heading the university council from 1896 onwards. The events of May‑June 1968 and the Faure Law of November 12, 1968 transformed this governance by affirming the legitimacy of the university president elected by the university council, composed of elected representatives from all categories of users. In Lille, these changes were profound, even if there was some continuity in the people placed at the helm of the “new world” of academia.
After the May 1968 crisis, French universities, which were still largely governed by provisions established at the end of the 19th century, were reformed (law Faure). Faculties disappeared in favor of teaching and research units (UER). There were no longer deans, but rather UER directors. In this upheaval, it was necessary to take into account the presence of several hundred faculty or university institutes, some of which would later become UERs. This section describes the major stages, from 1880 to 1968, in the creation of these institutes, as well as the main objectives of their founders.Then, by comparing their respective roles in the 1970s bodies of the Conference of University Presidents, we demonstrate the significant role played by former directors of certain institutes, including IEPs, IAEs, and research structures. At the same time, the former dean presidents play only a more modest role.
This paper analyzes how the body was exploited to represent power in coaches, carnival carts, and costumes created for princes and aristocrats during festivals in seventeenth‑century Rome. In the early modern period, Rome was a major diplomatic center where it was crucial to manifest preeminence. During the entry ceremonies of an ambassador or a sovereign, state coaches played a significant role as they were the first display of power. To adorn these sumptuous vehicles, the body appeared sculpted in the round, fully exhibited to the beholder’s gaze, to externalize the power and the political body of whom they were bearing. Whether depicted as captive or powerful, young or old, female or male, idealized or mythical, the body was always subject to the prince’s authority and chosen as a recurrent theme to convey sovereignty in a striking manner. However, concealing the body also epitomized power. Carnival was the perfect occasion for refined entertainments displaying prolific and erudite imagery. By covering their bodies with magnificent costumes, the aristocracy transcended their image, presenting themselves as idealized or mythical figures. Carnival carts conjured an ethereal universe composed of both monstruous and marvelous bodies fully guided and controlled by nobility, who was in turn magnified by sublime costumes.
The representation of the king as he entered the towns and cities of his kingdom emerged in France at the end of the 15th century. This figuration provides an opportunity to examine the coexistence of the physical royal person and his double, whether painted, sculpted, embodied or allusive (through emblematic imagery, for example). These different ways of representing the king, and the changes they underwent, are studied and highlight their link with the development of monarchical power in the 16th century France.
In the Renaissance, armor became much more than a defensive weapon: it was transformed into a true visual manifesto of power, identity, and ideology. Inspired by Antiquity, certain armors known as “antique” or “Roman-style” incorporated anatomical elements — muscles, faces, toes — that allowed the wearer to take on the appearance of a classical hero or a living statue. These creations, mastered by Milanese artisans such as Filippo Negroli, aimed to magnify the mortal body, to idealize it, and even to erase its imperfections. The influence of Mannerism introduced ambiguous, sometimes grotesque motifs that caricatured the enemy and reinforced the image of the triumphant Christian prince. Armor thus became a “skin of iron,” charged with complex symbolic meaning. Through these ceremonial pieces, elites asserted their authority, legitimacy, and connection to the heroes of the past in a spectacular staging of power and virtue.
The article analyses how the sculpted bodies in the Fountain of Fame (La Granja de San Ildefonso, Segovia) contribute to exalting the glory of the Catholic king, Philip V. Designed between 1728 and 1733, in the context of the (re)conquest of Oran (Algeria), this monumental work celebrates a decisive episode in the reign of the first Bourbon of Spain. Beyond the historical event, the sculptor René Frémin stages an ideological confrontation between royal virtue and enemy downfall, combining French, Italian, and Spanish artistic formulas. The body becomes the vehicle of a double fall – both physical and moral – and the support of a complex narrative interweaving myth, monarchical propaganda, and historical memory.
This article aims to reinterpret the functioning as an image of a 17th‑century royal icon, the bust of Louis XIV by Bernini, through its famous drapery. The latter’s position in relation to the artwork is unclear; it is part of it while enveloping it like an external element. Observed by contemporaries, this fact raises questions and allows us to get into a discourse on the sacred substance of the king’s body as well as on the power of the artwork and the artist.
In sixteenth‑century Florence, public sculpture underwent a significant transformation of the male ideal: the graceful and refined figure of the ephebe, rooted in classical antiquity and celebrated by humanist thought, gradually gave way to a more virile and muscular form drawn from Herculean imagery. This shift, initiated by Michelangelo and developed by sculptors in the service of the Medici, mirrored the consolidation of ducal power. The male nude emerged as a key instrument of political legitimation, blending classical beauty, martial energy, and erotic charge into a symbolic sculptural language. The Florentine urban space was thus reconfigured as an ideological stage, where domination was enacted through the representation of the male body.
This article examines monumental public sculpture as a privileged instrument for memorialising the king. While its exhibition value and its role in urban space have been discussed on numerous occasions, its immortalisation function remains insufficiently explored. The aim of statuary is not simply to freeze the memory of the sovereign in stone or bronze, but above all to transcend time, by erecting the king as a figure of eternity. This aspiration is forcefully expressed in numerous representations glorifying the monarch's youthful vigour, power and authority. One of the most significant forms of this iconography is that in which the monarch triumphs over Chronos, the allegorical figure of Time.
