Paris: World City, 1700 to the Present (341-0-20)

Instructors

Tessie Liu
467/491-3150
Harris Hall Room 327

Meeting Info

Harris Hall L06: Tues, Thurs 11:00AM - 12:20PM

Overview of class

COURSE DESCRIPTION: "By transforming love into romance, capitalist society allows us to continue desiring." By structuring satisfaction as ever incomplete, capitalism propels us to seek "the new, the better, and the more," writes film scholar Todd McGowan. Testing this contention on the "psychic costs of free markets," this class will take students to mid-nineteenth century Paris, when the modern iconic city of romance, with its elegant bridges, wide boulevards, endless fashion displays, and vibrant café life, was created in the capitalist transformation of its physical space and social relationships. Drawing on readings from feminist and queer theory, urban geography, sociology, art history, literature, and social history, we will use these various perspectives to study our main laboratory: the massive engineering projects under Baron Haussmann that demolished the twisted winding streets of old Paris to build the modern city of commerce and leisure. Using three of Emile Zola's novels on the "Haussmannization" of Paris, we will examine how changes in the physical structure altered the old connections between illicit sexualities and nonconforming gender practices. We will investigate how the new department stores, apartment buildings, the café-concerts, open-air promenades, and parks promoted bourgeois gender norms and sexual identities. In turn, we will ask how, with its new opportunities and deep losses, the moral economy of capitalism (its logic of production, profit taking, and social transactions) encouraged new subjectivities that ultimately reshaped both public and intimate spaces, as well as notions of pleasure and criminality. Most importantly, we will ask: what happened to love? The class combines lectures, in-class discussions, with short weekly assignments. Three short essays.

Learning Objectives

Critical analysis of sources; understanding change over time; developing an interdisciplinary inquiry using fictional and nonfictional sources, paintings, prints, and maps.

Evaluation Method

Attendance, essays, group work, and participation.

Class Notes

History Major Concentration(s): European
History Minor Concentration(s): Europe

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area