WGST 315
Paris on Fire: Incendiary Voices from the City of Light (1830-2005) Spring 2010
Division II
Cross-listed RLFR 316
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

During the 1830s, Balzac described Paris as a “surprising assemblage of movements, machines, and ideas, a city of one hundred thousand novels, the head of the world,” but also characterized the French capital as a “land of contrasts,” a “monstrous wonder,” a “moral sewer.” Similarly, writers from Hugo to Zola have simultaneously celebrated Parisian elegance and condemned the appalling misery of Paris’s urban poor. Since 1889, Paris has been fĂȘted as the “City of Light” for its Enlightenment legacy, its Eiffel Tower modernity, and its luminous urban energy, captured in countless paintings, photographs, and film. However, Paris is also the historical site of revolution, resistance, and riots. From revolutionary revolt (1830, 1848, 1871), to wartime resistance (1870, 1914-18, 1940-44), to reformist and race riots (1968 and 2005), Paris has repetitively sparked with incendiary passion and political protest. As fires raged during the recent riots in 2005, many heard the echo of Hitler’s ominous 1944 question, “Is Paris burning?” and asked: why was Paris burning again at the dawn of the twenty-first century? To answer this question, we will examine the social, political, and literary landscape of Paris during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from urbanization and modernization, to occupation and liberation, to immigration and globalization. Readings to include poetry, short stories, and novels by Hugo, Balzac, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Verne, Zola, Apollinaire, Colette, Duras, Perec, Rochefort, and Charef. Films to include works by Clair, Truffaut, Godard, Minnelli, ClĂ©ment, Lelouch, Luhrmann, Kassovitz, Besson, and Jeunet. Conducted in French.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 20
Expected: 20
Class#: 3330
Grading: yes pass/fail option, yes fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active class participation, two short papers, an oral presentation, and a final paper
Prerequisites: French 201, 202, 203 or permission of instructor
Enrollment Preferences: French, Comparative Literature, and Women's and Gender Studies majors, and those with compelling justification for admission
Unit Notes: formerly RLFR 214
Distributions: Division II
Notes: meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under RLFR; meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under WGST
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
RLFR 316 Division I WGST 315 Division II
Attributes: INST - Urbanizing World Electives

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