ROM-STD 230: Critical Archives in Theory and Practice
In the nearly thirty years since the publication of Derrida’s Archive Fever, the critical cachet of “the archive” has only been burnished, waxing not waning. In this course, we will think both theoretically and practically about what and where archives are, what digitization has done to them and to our research, how we might use them in our work, and what problems (ethical, epistemological, and writerly) doing so poses.
FRENCH 73: Making Modern France: A Media History
Moving from pamphlets, paperwork, and political pornography to popular serial novels, posters, protest ephemera, and politics on social media, this course will explore the way media has made French history and culture (and vice versa), from the Revolution to the present.
FRENCH 80QH: Queer Histories and Fictions
France has a reputation for being a romantic place, but the romantic narratives spun about the country (and about Paris in particular) are often heterosexual ones. France’s modern literary canon, much like its history, however, is full of queer figures. In this course, we will examine key queer texts by those both inside and outside queer communities from the last two centuries of French literature, reading both for what these texts can tell us about the queer past and for the ways in which literature questions the straight, binary status quo.
FRENCH 116: Balzac and the Modern French Novel
Honoré de Balzac, whom Henry James referred to as “the father of all of us” is a towering figure in the history of the modern French novel, influencing generations of writers from Zola to Robbe-Grillet who wanted to think with him, outdo him, or break with him. To better understand his importance to French literature, identity, and history we will read some of the most famous works from his La Comédie humaine—a series of interlinked novels that had the ambition of using human types to tell stories that describe the totality of reality—as well as works influenced by him. In the process, we will analyze what he meant and continues to mean for French literature and culture and, more generally, for how we see, understand, and interpret the world around us.
FRENCH 159: Sex Work: Epistemology of the Prostitute
Beginning in the nineteenth century, prostitution became a central theme in canonical French literature and a central target of social scientific inquiry. Knowledge about the world seemed to flow through the figure and the body of the “prostitute.” In this course, we will situate this knowledge production within the histories of prostitution, social investigation, the city of Paris, and the novel in order to understand why this was the case. In the process, we will pay close attention to the many things the prostitute symbolized from the nineteenth century to the present—from an embodiment of society’s ills to a searing critique of the social order itself.
FRENCH 243: New Directions in the Study of Gender and Sexuality
How does literature uphold and/or deconstruct the gender binary? What is the relationship between sexuality and political consciousness? How did gender become such a political football? Taking the Francophone world as a case study, in this course we will explore cutting edge work on gender and sexuality across the humanities and humanistic social sciences that takes up these questions and many others, allowing us to grapple with the productive problems—definitional, epistemological, empirical, theoretical, etc.—studying sexuality and gender brings into view.
FYSEMR 66G: Paris
Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world, drawing millions of visitors annually. What are they drawn by? Images and imaginings of the city—in art, literature, music, film, journalism, architecture, city planning, and more—have built the reputation of Paris as a City of Light, City of Art, and City of Love. In this class, we will explore Paris as portrayed by a diverse range of artists, authors, planners, and creators from France, America, and France’s former colonies, analyze the power of these depictions, and, together, build our own representations of this culturally and historically important city.