Seminar:

Catalog description

This seminar explores the history and representation of French colonial activity in the Americas, Asia, and Africa from the reign of Louis XIV to the invasion of Algiers (c. 1660-1830). It studies the formation and fall of state-sponsored corporations like the French East India Company, the Senegal Company, and the Mississippi Company, as well as entities and individuals involved in the transatlantic slave trade. It also examines the increasing reliance in eighteenth-century Europe on the production, extraction, exportation, and consumption of natural resources and commodities like sugar, mahogany, cotton, and indigo, not only for economic livelihood but also for the construction of what Simon Gikandi has called the “culture of taste:” a world of “civilized” European comportment and aesthetics that was fundamentally dependent on violent, dehumanizing practices of enslavement and human trafficking. In the second half of the semester, we will research largely unexplored links between plantation ownership and enslavement in France’s Caribbean colonies (most notably Saint Domingue/Haiti) and the production and consumption of art in metropolitan France, and we will work on a digital mapping project dedicated to revealing these links. Lastly, we will consider how museums have addressed or elided histories of slavery and colonialism in installations and exhibitions. Students will be required to produce a 15-20 page research paper or a creative project; reading knowledge of French is recommended but not required.