Content Courses
111. Histories of Paris
Professor Christina von Koehler
Using the buildings and space of Paris as a laboratory, this course surveys key events in the histories of Paris and France. The course will focus on the social and cultural history of the city in its material dimensions; the relation of streets and buildings to the unfolding events of French history, and the meanings of local topography within the enduring mythologies of the city. A central goal of the course is to teach students to read and write critically about the history of Paris and the cityscape around them. Includes some excursions.
5.0 UC quarter units. This course has previously transferred for these subject areas: History/Sociology/Urban Studies
115. European Integration
Professor Mariam Habibi
This course aims to provide a general introduction to the history, the structure and the current developments of the European Union with a specific focus on France. We shall look at the circumstances after the second World War that once again put the 'Idea of Europe' on the agenda and the role that France played in the rebirth of this idea. The EU will be studied from a theoretical point of view; how do we define its structure? What determines the shape and speed of the integration process? How does this institution maintain its legitimacy? We will evaluate the success of this project by looking at specific policies, such as the common agricultural policy, the economic and social policy and common foreign and security policies. Finally we will consider the role of the EU as a global actor and study the EU's relations with the rest of the world.
5.0 UC quarter units. This course has previously transferred for these subject areas: European Studies/History/Political Science
117. Media in France and the EU
Professor Joav Toker
This course will explore and critically analyse major institutions, actors and trends in contemporary French Media and attempt to situate them in the larger contexts of “unifying” Europe and “globalized” world-media-scene. It will examine the operational schemes, performances and internal decisional and power structures of different branches of French media: written national & regional press, specialized magazines, the publishing industry, advertising, radio, television, the internet. It will also engage in a specific analysis of ‘New Media’ and ‘Social Networks’ involvement, influence and interaction with ‘traditional’ media spheres and their political, social, and cultural impacts.
5.0 UC quarter units. This course has previously transferred for these subject areas: Communication/Sociology/Political Science
125. French Art: 1715 - 1914
Professor Christopher Boicos
This course traces the evolution of French painting from the decline of the Ancien Régime, through the upheavals of the Revolutionary age, to the birth of modern industrial and capitalist France in the 19th century. It ends with the last heroic re-definition of "modernity" in art at the opening of the 20th century.
5.0 UC quarter units. This course has previously transferred for these subject areas: Art History/European Studies/History
129. Parisian Voices in Literature
Professor Carole Viers-Andronico
In this course, students will engage in discussions prompted by a multiplicity of voices that make up what has been often referred to as the Parisian mosaic - a mosaic whose colorful tiles represent a collection of diverse and multivalent identities. Students will explore how the voices that have emerged in the past several decades bring myriad perspectives, ranging from "traditional" French culture to first and subsequent generation immigrant cultures, many of which come from former French colonies in the Francophone world, to bear on Parisian society and how these contemporary voices take a sometimes playful but often critical look at the identity of their post-war and postcolonial society. The course will, therefore, focus on examining the different social worlds that make contemporary Paris such a fascinating, diverse, and culturally important city. Through readings and class excursions to sites important to their understanding of the texts, students will trace some of the ways French alongside the more problematically termed Francophone writers and filmmakers have made their sundry voices heard over the past half a century.
5.0 UC quarter units. This course has previously transferred for these subject areas: Comparative Literature/French/History
130. Theater in France
Professor Will Bishop
This course is an introduction to the French theatrical tradition and its different techniques for staging drama from the 17th century to the present. It considers what role theater has played in the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic life of France. We will do this principally in close engagement with translations of several of the most important plays in French in readings, in-class staging, and perhaps semi-public performances of our own. We will also pursue the place of theater in France through class excursions to sites that are important for understanding the place of theater in Paris's present and past. According to the offerings of the theatrical season, we will spend an extended amount of time at work on one of the plays in the syllabus in preparation for attending a contemporary performance of that play. We will also be interested in theater's relation to film, and will watch and discuss several film versions of or related to the plays we're reading in class.
5.0 UC quarter units. This course has previously transferred as Comparative Literature/Dramatic Arts/History
131. Under French Eyes: America as Model and Counter-Model in France (XVIII-XXI centuries)
Professor Stephane Dufoix
It has become fashionable to speak about France and the United States as being “best enemies” or “twin enemies,” thus insisting on a strange relationship in which admiration and political friendship is combined with cultural misunderstandings and the production of numerous prejudices. Indeed, from the late eighteenth century onwards, the United States has been scrutinized by French politicians, artists, intellectuals, and journalists, among others. For more than two centuries, it has been France’s best enemy, either praised as the inspiration for French art and culture, politics, society and economy, or stigmatized as the epitome of everything that is un-French and should never be imported or implemented on French soil: capitalism, the reign of money, dangerous and soulless towns, violence, and the tyranny of ethnic, racial or cultural communities. The aim of this course is to map this complicated and paradoxical stance through the lens of history and sociology, and by examining French cultural products such as travel journals, essays, songs, essays, novels and films that place the United States under French eyes.
5.0 UC quarter units. Suggested subject areas for this course: History/Political Science/Sociology
132. Paris Jazz
Professor Lorraine Roubertie Soliman
This course offers an overview of the jazz phenomenon in Paris from a socio-historical and political perspective. Despite the warmest of welcomes jazz and its main American expatriate protagonists received during the 1920s and 1930s, this musical genre was controversial, to say the least. Replete with symbolic meanings, it greatly impacted the collective cultural imaginary at a time when French society was being reconsidered and redefined. Drawing on a wide picture of the jazz scene during the interwar years, and on several case studies centering on French writers and critics, such as Boris Vian, Jean Cocteau, and André Hodeir, students will discover and analyze the significance of the genre’s Paris story and how French society responded to it. Through the study of historical events and individual accounts, they will explore the specific dynamics that surrounded jazz in Paris – the way this music attracted and brought together different spheres of a society separated by a host of issues, and the ambivalent feelings it revealed regarding America, which embodied, for many, an ideal of modernity, an ideal that was perceived by some as threatening. The course will then turn its attention to the decades following the Second World War, from the sixties until today, and to the different means through which jazz has been assimilated and re-appropriated. Among other aspects of this phenomenon, students will interrogate the French vision (and the mythology occasioned by it) of free jazz that crossed over the Atlantic in the sixties, as well as the unique crossover between local jazz and African popular or traditional musical genres. As part of the course, students will visit a site important to the Paris jazz phenomenon and will attend an evening performance at one of the historic landmark clubs. The course also hopes to include a guest lecture by a Paris jazz musician for both musical and testimonial purposes.
5.0 credits. Suggested subject areas for this course: Music/History/Sociology