Courses

First Year Seminar, Pariscape: In the century between the inaugurations of Eiffel's tower (1889) and Pei's pyramidal entrance to the Louvre (1989), Paris has been one of the exemplary sites of our urban sensibility, a city that has informed, often controversially, the modern imagination. Poets, novelists, and essayists, painters, photographers, and film-makers: all have made use of Paris and its "cityscape" to examine relationships among technology, literature, city planning, art, politics, and what we might call the urban will. This course will examine how certain visual and textual representations of a specific city in a specific time came to stand for "modernism," and how cities in general have served as great engines of cultural, political, and intellectual change. In order to discover elements of a common memory of Paris, we will study novelists and poets (e.g. Proust, Apollinaire, Breton, Stein, Hemingway), philosophers (e.g. Simmel, Benjamin, de Certeau), film-makers (e.g. Feuillade, Clair, Truffaut), photographers (e.g. Atget, Brassaï), painters( e.g. Picasso, Chagall, Delaunay, Matisse), and architects (e.g. Piano and Pei). Finally, we will look at how such phenomena as tourism, print media, public works, immigration, and suburban development affect a city's simultaneous, and frequently uncomfortable, identity as both an imaginative and a geo-political site.

Masterpieces of French Literature in Translation: In this course we will read a variety of French literary works from the eighteenth century to the present. Readings may include Voltaire's Candide, Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons, Charrière's The Letters of Mistress Henley, Stendhal's The Red and the Black, Balzac's Cousin Bette, Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Zola's Nana, or The Ladies' Paradise, Proust's Swann in Love, Camus' The Plague or The First Man, Duras' The Lover. We will study these works first as masterful stories, but we also will consider questions of cultural and personal influence, including sexuality and class. We will also learn why most of these works were judged politically or morally scandalous when they came out. For instance, special attention will be paid to the trials and censorship of Baudelaire and Flaubert. Finally, we will study some films inspired by these texts, and learn how different media can treat the same subject. Conducted in English. (French majors will be encouraged to write their papers in French, and to read a portion of these works in French).

Readings in the European Tradition II: Readings in the European Tradition II. Reading and discussion of works of literature that have contributed in important ways to the definition of the European imagination: Machiavelli's The Prince, Cervantes' Don Quixote, two plays of Shakespeare, Racine's Phaedra, Molière's Tartuffe, Descartes' Discourse on Method, Milton's Paradise Lost, Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Voltaire's Candide, Goethe's Faust I, selected poems of Wordsworth, Marx's Communist Manifesto, J.S. Mill's On Liberty, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. Open not only to European Studies majors but also to any student interested in the intellectual and literary development of Europe from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Two class meetings per week.

Napoleon's Legends: Napoleon Bonaparte's legacy in domestic and international politics and military strategy profoundly influenced nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. But so did his legend, created before his great defeat and exile, and nurtured after his death in 1821. In this course, we will study painting (e.g., David and Goya), narrative fiction (e.g., Austen, Balzac, Stendhal, and Tolstoy), poetry (e.g., Wordsworth and Hugo), music (e.g., Beethoven), urban history and architecture (e.g., of Paris), and the silent and sound films of the first half of our century (e.g., Gance). We will examine how different generations and a variety of cultures appropriated the imagined and real image of Napoleon and his deeds for social, political, and artistic ends, and thereby influenced the creation of modern Europe. Two class meetings per week.

Napoleon's Legends: Napoleon Bonaparte's legacy in domestic and international politics and military strategy profoundly influenced nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. But so did his legend, created before his great defeat and exile, and nurtured after his death in 1821. In this course, we will study painting (e.g., David and Goya), narrative fiction (e.g., Austen, Balzac, Stendhal, and Tolstoy), poetry (e.g., Wordsworth and Hugo), music (e.g., Beethoven), urban history and architecture (e.g., of Paris), and the silent and sound films of the first half of our century (e.g., Gance). We will examine how different generations and a variety of cultures appropriated the imagined and real image of Napoleon and his deeds for social, political, and artistic ends, and thereby influenced the creation of modern Europe. Two class meetings per week.