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UC Center Program
Courses - Fall 2005
PCC 111. Histories of Paris
Lecture
Tue 10:30 - noon
Wed 4 - 5:30 pm |
Prof.
Mark Meigs
Office Hours TBA |
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. Course meets twice a week with site visits and once a week in tutorial. [History, Urban Studies, Sociology, Architecture, French] 5.0 credits
COURSE MATERIALS
- Colin Jones, Paris: Biography of a City, Allen Lane-Penguin, 2004
(The first two chapters of this book will not be assigned, but students are encouraged to read them for their pleasure)
- Honoré de Balzac, Old Goriot
This novel of some 300 pages is highly enjoyable, often moving and sometimes very funny as well as being full of historical information. Students should judge how long they will need to read it. Starting a couple of weeks before the discussion in week 5 is advised.
- A Course Reader ( [CR] hereafter)
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Students are expected to do each week's readings before the first week's session, and to attend the mandatory site visits.
- Class participation (including several short written exercises throughout the term) will be worth 25% of the grade.
- There will also be a research paper (10 pages) 25%
- a midterm 25%
- a final 25%
COURSE SCHEDULE
There is also a separate Course Resources Page with additional electronic materials for this course.
Week 1. September 12-16
The Past in the Present
Session 1: Reading the City: The Louvre from Philippe Auguste to I.M. Pei
Session 2: Recognizing the Styles and Symbols of Paris.
Class Excursion
Reading:
- Colin Jones, “Paris Reborn, Paris Reformed (c. 1480-1594)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 111-151
- Jean-Pierre Babelon, “The Louvre: Royal Residence and the Temple to the Arts” in Pierre Nora's Realms of Memory: Volume III, pp. 253-289 [CR]
Documents:
Websites:
Week 2. September 19-23
Urban Absolutism and Enlightenment
Session 1 : Royal Squares and Gardens
Session 2: Gender and Representation
Class Excursion
Reading:
Websites:
Week 3. September 26-30
Anti-Urban Absolutism
Session 1: Versailles and Les Invalides
Session 2: Expressing and Monitoring Public Opinion
Class Excursion
Reading:
- Jones,“The Kingless Capital of Enlightenment (1715-89)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 199-246
- Edouard Pommier, “Versailles: The Image of the Sovereign” in Pierre Nora's Realms of Memory: volume III, Realms of Memory, vol. 3, pp. 293-324 [CR]
- Robert Darnton, “An Early Information Society”, (on public opinion, cafe life, and communications networks in eighteenth-century Paris); recommended is the segment on “Public Opinion and Communications Networks in Eighteenth Century Paris"” under that heading examine: “Policing a Poem” and “A communication Network”
- Jeffrey S. Ravel, “Seating the Public: Spheres and Loathing in the Paris Theaters, 1777-1788” in French Historical Studies, vol.18, n.1, Spring, 1993), pp. 173-210
Documents:
Websites:
Week 4. October 3-7
Revolutionary Paris
Session 1: Interpretations of the French Revolution of 1789
Session 2: Paris and the Revolution of 1789
- Jones, “Revolution and Empire (1789-1815)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 247-302
- David Garrioch, Chapters 11 & 12 in The Making of Revolutionary Paris, UC Press, 2002, pp. 260-302 [CR]
- Mona Ozouf, “The Festival and Space” in Festival and the French Revolution, Harvard University Press, 1988, pp.126-157 [CR]
Documents:
- Louis-Sebastien Mercier, “The Buyer of Annuities”, “Madames”, “Palais Royal” in Panorama of Paris, pp. 137-140, 142-148, 202-209 [CR]
Websites:
Week 5. October 10-14
Revolution and Memory
Session 1: The Revolutionary Century
Session 2: Society and a Revolutionary Century
Reading:
- Honore Balzac, Old Goriot
Documents:
Websites:
Week 6. October 17-21
Reading and Writing the Post-Revolutionary City
Session 1: Crime and Representation
Session 2: The Factory and the City
Reading:
- Jones, “Between the Napoleons (1815-1851)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 303-343
- Louis Chevalier, “The Pictoresque Literature” in Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris During the First Half of the Nineteenth-Century, Howard Ferting, 2000, pp. 59-79 [CR]
- W. Scott Haine, “Café Friendship': Friendship and Fraternity in Parisian Working Class Cafés, 1850-1914” in Journal of Contemporary History, vol.27, n.4 October 1992, pp.607-626
Documents:
Week 7. October 24-28
MIDTERM
Post-Revolutionary Society
Session 1: Midterm
Session 2: The Family and Its Discontents
Reading:
MIDTERM BREAK (October 30-November 7)
Week 8. November 7-9
Paris and Consumers
Session 1: The Consumer and the City
Session 2: The Big Stores and Boulevards: Haussmannisation
Class Excursion
Reading:
- Jones, “Haussmannism and the City of Modernity (1851-89)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 344-395
- Walter Benjamin, “Paris The Capital of the Nineteenth Century” in The Arcades Project, Belknapp Press, 2002, pp. 3-26. [CR]
- Vanessa R. Schwartz, “The Musée Grévin: Museum and Newspaper in One” in Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-siècle Paris, UC Press, 1998) [CR]
Week 9. November 14-18
The Commune and its Memoires
Session 1: The Paris Commune
Session 2: The End of a Revolutionary Century
(Recommended student visits: République, Arc de Triomphe, Square Louis XVI, Bastille, le Panthéon, Cimitière Père LaChaise Mur des Martyrs.)
Reading:
- Jones, “The Anxious Spectacle (1889-1918)”
in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 396-442
- Eugene Schulkind, “Socialist Women during the 1871 Paris Commune” in Past and Present, n.106, Febraury 1985, pp. 124-163
- Cole, “The Republican City, 1871-1939”, pp.178-207 [Reserve Collection]
- M. Agulhon, “Paris: A Traversal from East to West” in Pierre Nora's Realms of Memory: volume III, pp 523-552 [CR]
- M. Ozouf, “The Panthéon: The Ecole Normale of the Dead” in Pierre Nora's Realms of Memory: volume III, pp 325-346 [CR]
Documents:
Websites:
Week 10. November 21-25
Paris as Spectacle for Sale
Tuesday: The Paris Where Highbrow Meets Lowbrow
Thursday: Paris and Mass Culture: in movies and music.
Recommended student visits: Bon Marché, Samaritaine, Galéries Lafayette, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Hotel Drouot, Carreau du Temple , Puces de St-Ouen.)
Reading:
- Jones, “Faded Dreams, Lost Illusions (1918-1945)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 443-489
- T.J. Clark, “A Bar at the Folies Bergères” in The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers, Thames & Hudson, 2003, pp. 205-268 [CR]
- Michael Seidman, “The Birth of the Weekend and the Revolts against Work: The Workers of the Paris Region during the Popular Front (1936-38)” in French Historical Studies, vol.12, n.2, 1981, pp. 249-276
Websites:
Week 11. November 28 - December 2
The Paris of Foreigners, Tourists, Expats, Soldiers, Immigrants
Tuesday: Expatriates and Culture
Thursday: Immigrants and Society
(Recommended student visits: Tour Eiffel, Mosquée de Paris, American Cathedral, Café de la Coupole, Café de Flore, Café des Deux Magots, Conservatoire Rachmaninoff.)
Reading:
- Tyler Stovall, “Freedom Overseas: African-American Soldiers Fight the Great War” in Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light, Houghton Mifflin, 1996, pp. 1-24 [CR]
- Ernest Hemingway, ch.1 in A Moveable Feast, Touchstone, 1996, pp. 3-8 [CR]
- Rosemary Wakeman, “Nostalgic Modernism and the Invention of Paris in the Twentieth Century” in French Historical Studies, vol.26, Winter 2004, pp. 115-144
- Jeffrey H. Jackson, “Making Jazz French: The Reception of Jazz Music in Paris, 1927-1934” in French Historical Studies, vol.25, n.1, Winter 2002, pp. 149-170
Week 12. December 5-9
Paris, World War II and its Consequences
Tuesday: The Occupation
Thursday: Paris from the Fourth Republic to 1968
- Jones, “The Remaking of Paris (1945—c. 1995)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 490-544
- James F. Hollifield, “Immigration and Modernization” in J.F. Hollifield and G. Ross, Searching for the New France, Routledge, 1991, pp. 113-150 [Student Hand-out]
- P. Burrin, “Intellectuals and Self-Preservation” in France Under the Germans, The New Ress, 1996, pp. 306-23 [CR]
- Andrew Feenberg and Jim Freedman, When Poetry Ruled the Streets. The French May Events of 1968, SUNY Press, 2001, pp. 1-30 & 69-91 [CR]
Websites:
Week 13. December 12-16
REVIEW AND FINAL EXAMINATIONS
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