Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey will host the 54th annual meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies from April 3 - 5,  2008. All sessions of the conference will take place at the Hyatt Regency in downtown New Brunswick on Friday, April 4 and Saturday, April 5. The conference will begin on Thursday night, April 3 with registration and a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Myriam Cottias (CNRS), director of the international research group on slavery based at the EHESS, author of numerous books and edited collections on gender, slavery and historical memory, and most recently filmmaker ("Tropiques Amers," 2007) will be our featured speaker at the Friday luncheon. The Zimmerli art museum on the Rutgers campus will host our Friday evening reception. The conference will coincide with a major show devoted to  Honoré Daumier at the Zimmerli museum. On our Saturday program, our very distinguished guest will be Professor Denis Crouzet (Sorbonne, Paris) the internationally known scholar of religion, violence, historiography, and apocalyptic thought. His many scholarly works and research projects include Les Guerriers de  Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion (1990), Un 'Haut Coeur' de Catherine de Médicis (2005) and Christophe Colomb: Héraut d'une apocalypse(2006) . At the  Saturday dinner banquet, renowned scholar Natalie Zemon Davis (Professor emerita, Princeton and Toronto), whose most recent foray into early modern culture is Trickster Travels (2006), will join her friend and collaborator, Denis Crouzet, for an informal discussion of the meaning of histoire engagée. We are honored to have the participation of Professors Cottias, Crouzet, and Davis at our annual meeting.