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Description
This seminar
focuses on the transformation of the French urban landscape after WW II
through film, architecture and text. We will investigate the
transformation of the French “city” from a nucleated urban center to
sprawling and poly-nucleated urban continuum. Our goal is to better
understand the phenomena of urban transformation with respect to
cultural production, from Reconstruction after WW II to the present. In
terms of architectural type and urban site, we will focus our attention
on life in les grands ensembles, or large state-subsidized
high-rise housing developments, located in la banlieue française,
or the French suburb. This seminar requires weekly attendance in class
and film screenings, completion of reading prior to class, lively
participation through discussion and debate and a class presentation
made in conjunction with a fifteen-page essay.
Texts
The following texts are available at the bookstore for purchase:
1.) Etienne
Balibar.
We, the People of
Europe?: Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Translation/Transnation).
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. ISBN 0691089906
2.) Roland Barthes. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New
York: Hill and Wang, 1972. ISBN
3.) Guy Debord.
The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New
York: Zone, 1995. ISBN 0942299795
4.) Marc Dessauce, Ed. The Inflatable Moment: Pneumatics and Protest in 68. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. ISBN 1568981767
5.) Norma Evenson.
Paris: A Century of Change, 1878-1978. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1979. ISBN 0300026676
6.) Frantz Fanon.
The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1965. ISBN
0802150837
7.) Kristen Ross.
Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French
Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0262680912
Essay
The requirements for
the essay are the following:
-title page
-15 pages
-standard margins and 10 or 12 pt. font
-foot- or endnotes
-bibliography with at least 5 sources of which only two may be websites
-images where necessary
Please meet with the professor during office hours to discuss a paper
topic. The essay is due in the professor’s mailbox on Thursday May 4 by
5:00 pm.
Grading
Your grade in the course will be calculated from the
following percentages:
Participation: 33%
Presentation: 33%
Essay: 33%
Attendance
Attendance is
mandatory. You may have one unexcused absence, after which your grade
will be lowered by one letter grade with each subsequent absence.
If
you will not be able to attend a specific session, you must make
arrangements with another student to get copies of notes, etc.
Assignments must be turned in on time; for each 24-hour period an
assignment is late, one full grade will be deducted (e.g., an “A” paper
will become a “B” paper). Appropriate medical and family excuses will
be accepted in order to establish new dates for assignments. Students
participating in an officially sanctioned, scheduled University
extracurricular activity will be given the opportunity to make up class
assignments or other graded assignments missed as a result of their
participation. It is the responsibility of the student to make
arrangements with the instructor prior to any missed assignment for
making up the work. (University Undergraduate Catalogue) Religiously
observant students wishing to be absent on holidays that require missing
class should notify their professors in writing at the beginning of the
semester, and should discuss with them, in advance, acceptable ways of
making up any work missed because of the absence. (See University
Policy No. 1.9.)
Schedule
Thursday January 19: Introduction: War, urbanisme, and housing
in France
Thursday January 26: Paris in the 20th Century
1.) Evenson, 1-119; 199-255
2.) David P. Jordan, “Haussmann and Haussmannisation: The Legacy for
Paris,” French Historical Studies 27.1 (2004) 87-113. Available
on-line at JSTOR
3.) Rosemary Wakeman, “Nostalgic Modernism and the Invention of Paris in the
Twentieth Century,” French Historical Studies 27.1 (2004)
115-144. Available on-line at JSTOR
*Screening of “Zazie dans le metro’
(1960) by Ramond Queneau and Louis Malle
Thursday February 2: Consumerism in France and the beginning of les
trentes glorieuses
1.) Ross, 15-196
*Screening of “Mon Oncle” (1958) by
Jacques Tati
Thursday February 9: Toward New Mythologies
1.) Barthes, 15-99
*Screening of “Alphaville” (1965) by
Jean-Luc Godard
Thursday February 16: Paradise of the New
1.)Christiane Rochefort, Children of Heaven, 1-119 RESERVE
*Screening of “Playtime” (1967) by Jacques
Tati
Thursday February 23: Dystopia of the New
1.) Mary
Jean Green, Lynn Higgins and Marianne Hirsch, “Rochefort and Godard: Two
or Three Things about Prostitution,” The French Review, Vol. 52,
No. 3 (Feb. 1979) 440-448. Available on-line at JSTOR
2.)Allen Thiher, “Postmodern Dilemmas: Godard’s Alphaville and Two or Three
Things That I Know about Her, boundary 2, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring
1976) 947-964. Available on-line at JSTOR
*Screening of “Two or Three Things I Know
about Her” (1967) by Jean-Luc Godard
Thursday March 2: The Production of Space(s)
1.)Henri Lefebvre, Writings on the City, 3-62; 65-85; 185-197
RESERVE
2.)Mark
Gottdiener, A Marx of
Our Time: Henri Lefebvre and The Production of Space." Sociological
Theory 11 (1993) 129-34. Available on-line at JSTOR and PROJECT
MUSE
3.)Lee Hilliker,
“The History of the Future in Paris: Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard in
the 1960s,” Film Criticism, Vol. 24 Issue 3 (Spring 2004) 1-15.
Available on-line at JSTOR and PROJECT MUSE
*Screening of
“La Jétee” (1962) by Chris Marker
Thursday
March 9: Urbanisme and Mai ‘68
1.)Debord, 1-154
2.)Dessauce,
13-62
3.) Simon Sadler,
The Situationist City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) 15-104
RESERVE
*Screening of
“Society of the Spectacle” (1968) by Guy Debord
Thursday
March 16: SPRING BREAK
Thursday March 23: Decolonization and Agency
1.) Fanon, 35-248
*Screening of
“Battle of Algiers” (1967) by Gillo Pontecorvo
Thursday
March 30: Life in la banlieue and in a “postcolonial” world
1.) Carrie Tarr, Reframing Difference: Beur and banlieue
Filmmaking in France, 62-85 RESERVE
2.) Myrto
Konstantarakos, “Which Mapping of the City? La Haine (Kassovitz
1995), French Cinema in the 1990s: Continuity and Difference,
Phil Powrie, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 160-171 RESERVE
3.) Ginette
Vincendeau, “Designs on the banlieue: Mathieu Kassovitz’s La
Haine (1995),” French Film: Texts and Contexts, Susan Hayward
and Ginette Vincendeau, eds. (London: Routledge, 2000) 310-327 RESERVE
*Screening of
“La Haine” (1995) by Mathieu Kassovitz
Thursday
April 6: Hip Hop and Rap in France
1.)Joan Gross, “Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap, and
Franco-Maghrebi Identity,” The Anthropology of Globalization: A
Reader, Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo, eds. (New York:
Blackwell, 2001) RESERVE
2.)Valerie
Orlando, “From Rap to Rai in the Mixing Bowl: Beur Hip-Hop Culture and
banlieue Cinema in Urban France,“ Journal of Popular Culture,
Vol. 36 Issue 3 (Winter 2003). Available on-line at JSTOR and PROJECT
MUSE
*Screening of
“Café au Lait” (1998) by Mathieu Kassovitz
Thursday
April 13: Feminism in la banlieue
1.) Charissa N. Terranova, “Ni putes ni soumises! Neither Whores Nor
Submissives!” Women & Environments International Magazine (June
2004) 25-27 RESERVE
2.)Eileen
O’Brien and Michael Armato, "L’affaire des foulards’: Problems of
Defining a Feminist Antiracist Strategy in French Schools,”
Feminism and Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice,
France Winddance Twine and Kathleen M. Blee, eds. (New
York: New York University Press, 2001)
RESERVE
*Screening
of “La Squale” (2000) by Fabrice Genestal
Thursday
April 20: Le metro at the fin-de-millennium
1.) François Maspero and Anaik Frantz, Roissy Express: A Journey
through the Paris Suburbs, 1-270 RESERVE
*Screening of
“Banlieue 13” (2004) by Pierre Morel, Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri
Thursday
April 27: La banlieue and Cosmopolitanism
1.)Charissa Terranova, “City-Citizen-Border: Towards a Politics of
the Cosmopolitan,” Vision, Vol. 7 (2003) 127-138 RESERVE
2.)Etienne Balibar, 1-311
3.)Optional reading: Tom McDonough, “No
Ghost,” October Issue 110 (Fall 2004) 107-130; Available on-line
at JSTOR
4.)In-class viewing of Pierre Huyghe’s video
Thursday May
4: FINAL ESSAY DUE
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