France-Florida Research Institute

Dominique Kalifa is a historian and the author of Vice, Crime, and Poverty: How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld, forthcoming in spring 2019 from Columbia University Press.

Dominique Kalifa is a historian and professor at the University of Paris 1, where he heads the Center of 19th Century History. His work focuses on the history of crime, social control, and mass culture in 19th- and early 20th-century France and Europe. He wrote the first book on the private detective métier, published in 2000 as Naissance de la police privée, and is a member of the Historical Committee of the City of Paris. Since 1990, he has been a literary contributor to Libération.

About the book: Vice, Crime, and Poverty: How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld, Columbia University press, April 2019, tr. by Susan Emanuel)

Vice, Crime, and Poverty: How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld (Columbia University Press) is the winner of the 2013 Prix Mauvais genres. The book examines the underworld of 19th and 20th century France. From Batman’s Gotham to Eugène Sue’s Paris, Kalifa explores how journalism, literature, and film have framed our fascination and repulsion with this world of crime, violence, vice, and poverty.