Global Arc

A survey of the literature of decolonization in the Francophone world. The focus will be on the invention of a critical and militant literature in 1950's and 60's North and West Africa, the Caribbean, and Viet Nam. Texts will include poetry, essays, novels, and films. Prerequisite: 200-level French class or permission of instructor.

This course examines the connections between modern French poetry and the Arts. The period under investigation is the 19th and 20th centuries, starting with the Romantics and ending with recent developments in visual arts, poetry, and poetics. The class will be taught at the Princeton Art Museum and each week will focus on one work, style, or art movement and poetry's interaction with them. Readings include poets like Bertrand, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Cendrars, and Breton. The thematic topics that will structure the course are the poem as ekphrasis, the poet as art critic, collaborations between poets and artists, etc.

A study of the French avant-garde movements from 1900 to the 1960s through encounters with literature, visual arts, cinema, and architecture.The course will be structured both chronologically and thematically for a deep exploration of the creations of the French avant-garde: from cubist painting and poetry, Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, to Lettrisme and the Internationale Situationiste, the students will be exposed to the most influential artistic experimentations of the 20th century. Topics will include the avant-garde magazine, the avant-garde performance, word and image, avant-garde and the city, the politics of the avant-garde, etc.

This course will offer an overview of the history and culture of Haiti, the world's first black republic. In 1804, the former slaves of French St. Domingue under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture defeated the most powerful army in the world, Napoleon's to become the world's first post-slavery, black republic. The course will sample the rich history, novels, Afro-caribbean religion (Vodun), plays, music, film, and visual arts of this unique postcolonial nation.

In 19th century France, the emerging periodical press lay at the epicenter of public and cultural life. This seminar will explore the press from a number of perspectives: the technological breakthroughs and social upheavals that spurred its growth, the major figures and seminal publications that marked its evolution, and the legal and political forces seeking to unleash or restrain it. Readings include articles from major newspapers and magazines, contemporary literary and cultural criticism, and selections from several "novels of journalism". Class will introduce students to Firestone's collections of 19th century French periodicals.

Perhaps the greatness of works of art and literature -- and of one's life -- can be gauged by the importance they confer to things of no obvious significance: anecdotes, anonymous people, ephemeral characters, trivial details gleaned from daily life. Through readings of texts and film, as well as artworks from Princeton University Art Museum's collections, we will question, far beyond the concerns of minimalism, what is at stake in the possibility of the sublime within the banal. At the crossings of ethics and aesthetics, be raised the questions of what it means to not mean much, and, yet, be absolutely indispensable.

This class will examine the cinema and literature of the Black Metropolis. The course will focus on the cinematographic production that presents Black lives in metropolises of the world, particularly in Paris, along with theoretical work and novels to help us define the concept more cogently. Focus on Black social upward mobility and migration, Black identity and self-expression. We will look at issues related to both representation and aesthetics, and at the ways through which a transnational Blackness impacts the general politics of cultural representation in the world.

What is an archive? What role do archives play in producing historical knowledge and cultural memory? How are new digital technologies reshaping the archive and thereby transforming our relationship to the past? This course develops practical research skills by introducing students to major archives and digital collections in France, while also exploring key theoretical works on the archive from media theory, literary criticism, and philosophy (Foucault, Nora, Benjamin, Derrida). Students will also gain hands-on experience producing their own new media "archives" by creating podcasts and participating in an ongoing digital humanities project.

This course will introduce students to French critical theory, focusing on political theory with close reading of a selection of brief, representative original texts. Authors will include Toussaint Louverture, Olympe de Gouges, Hegel, Marx, Sartre, Beauvoir, Fanon, Althusser, Foucault, Rancière, and Badiou. Particular attention will be paid to close-reading of shorter, but often demanding primary texts and to the intensive relation in this tradition between political and ethical theory and practice, including its interrogation in what one might call a politics of principle addressing problems such as universality, equality, and justice.

Writing, Directing and Acting Others will be exceptionally co-taught by celebrated French playwright and director Pascal Rambert and Florent Masse. Students will have the chance to immerse themselves in the theater-making process, writing, directing and acting texts that they will devise under Pascal Rambert's guidance. Students will conceive characters inspired by people from the surrounding local community. The class will culminate in the making of a full production and performances open to the public on May 1-2, 2019.