FRENCH 101: The View From Paris (HISTORY 231P)

Course Description

The Global Gateway course explores the history of Paris through its artistic and literary production from the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. In this course, students will trace the cultural, artistic, political, infrastructural, and commercial changes over three centuries that made Paris, for a time, the capital of the modern world. Beginning with the Enlightenment, the course asks what aspects of Paris and its cultures of sociability were conducive to such knowledge production. Moving into the nineteenth century, students will examine how Paris became a main character in literature, as writers grappled with urbanization, industrialization, and the modernization of a city in transformation - whether by revolution, Haussmann's renovation of Paris, or commercial innovation with the birth of the department stores or "grands magasins." Finally, the course concludes with a reflection on significant eras of artistic production in Paris, from the Belle Époque to surrealism, World War II and the Occupation, Americans in Paris, postwar art and literature, and classic French cinema. In this course, students will engage with a rich variety of literary texts, secondary sources, and film. Students will also have the opportunity to work with materials in Special Collections from the Roxane Debuisson Collection on Paris History, including rare maps, commercial ephemera, photographs, postcards, billheads, and more. Readings may include texts by authors such as Mercier, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, George Sand, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Zola, Colette, Breton, Gertrude Stein, and Barthes. Course taught in English.