UC Center Program Courses - Fall 2006
PCC 111. Histories of Paris
Prof. Mark Meigs

Office Hours

By appointment
Lecture
Wed & Thu 3:30-5:00pm
Section
Tue 1:30-2:30pm

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. [History, Urban Studies, Sociology, Architecture, French] 6.0 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. Sep 11-15
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: Louvre

Reading:

  • Colin Jones, “Paris Reborn, Paris Reformed (c. 1480-1594)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 96-131
  • 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]

Suggested Documents:

Websites:

Week 2. Sep 18-22
Urban Absolutism and Enlightenment

Session 1 : Royal Squares and Gardens
Session 2: Gender and Representation

Class Excursion (Thursday 21): Musée Carnavalet

Reading:

Websites:

Week 3. Sep 25-29
Anti-Urban Absolutism

Session 1: Versailles and Les Invalides
Session 2: Expressing and Monitoring Public Opinion

Reading:

  • Jones,“The Kingless Capital of Enlightenment (1715-89)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 173-214
  • 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: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris”, American Historical Review, Feb. 2000, vol. 105, n.1 [CR]
  • 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:

  • Louis-Sebastien Mercier, “Doorways” & “Lantern Men” in Panorama of Paris, pp. 89-91, 132-134 [CR]

Websites:

Week 4. Oct 2-6
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. 215-262
  • 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:

Suggested Reading:

  • David Garrioch, Chapters 11 & 12 in The Making of Revolutionary Paris, UC Press, 2002, pp. 260-302 [CR]

Week 5. Oct 9-13
Revolution and Memory

Session 1: The Revolutionary Century
Session 2: Society and a Revolutionary Century

Reading:

  • Honore Balzac, Old Goriot

Suggested Documents:

Websites:

Week 6. Oct 16-20
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. 263-298
  • 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

Suggested Documents:

Week 7. Oct23-27
MIDTERM
Post-Revolutionary Society

Session 1: Midterm
Session 2: The Family and Its Discontents

Reading:

FALL BREAK

Week 8. Nov 6-10
Paris and Consumers

Session 1: The Consumer and the City
Session 2: The Big Stores and Boulevards: Haussmannisation

Reading:

  • Jones, “Haussmannism and the City of Modernity (1851-89)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 299-343
  • 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. Nov 13-17
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. 344-384
  • Eugene Schulkind, “Socialist Women during the 1871 Paris Commune” in Past and Present, n.106, Febraury 1985, pp. 124-163
  • 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]

Suggested Documents:

Websites:

Week 10. Nov 20-24
Paris as Spectacle for Sale

Session 1 : The Paris Where Highbrow Meets Lowbrow
Session 2: 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:

Websites:

Week 11. Nov 27 - Dec 1
The Paris of Foreigners, Tourists, Expats, Soldiers, Immigrants

Session 1 : Expatriates and Culture
Session 2: 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]
  • 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. Dec 4-8
Paris, World War II and its Consequences

Session 1 : The Occupation
Session 2: Paris from the Fourth Republic to 1968

  • Jones, “The Remaking of Paris (1945—c. 1995)” in Paris: Biography of a City, pp. 426-474
  • 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. Dec 11-15
REVIEW AND FINAL EXAMINATIONS