author
André Jean Tudesq
A historian with an unusually wide range, he wrote a landmark study of France’s nineteenth-century elites and later became a pioneering scholar of media in Africa. His work helped bridge history and communication studies in France.
1 Audiobook
The Square Jaw
by Henry Ruffin, André Jean Tudesq
About the author
Born in 1927 and active for many years in Bordeaux, André-Jean Tudesq was a French historian and university professor whose career moved across both nineteenth-century history and the study of modern media. Sources about his life consistently describe him as an energetic, prolific scholar with a lasting influence on students and researchers.
He is especially known for his major thesis on Les grands notables en France (1840-1849), a work remembered as an important contribution to the study of political and social elites in modern France. Later, he became one of the early scholars to open up serious academic study of African media, especially radio and television, helping shape that field while also taking part in the growth of information and communication studies.
Tudesq died in 2009. His reputation rests on both the breadth of his research and the way he connected historical inquiry with close attention to contemporary public life and media.