Paris: Capital of the Modern World

Catalog description

This course explores how Paris, between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, became the political, cultural, and artistic capital of the modern world. We will consider how the city has both shaped and been shaped by the tumultuous events of modern history - class conflict, industrialization, imperialism, war, occupation, and immigration. We will begin with the premise that Paris has long been a place with many overlapping and competing histories. Emerging as a national, regional, and imperial capital in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Paris was where revolutionary ideas were born and exported abroad. In the mid-nineteenth century, the city became a model of urban planning and architectural design. In the twentieth century, the city drew painters, photographers, writers, and entertainers to live and work in what many considered the center of the modern world. More recently, Paris has emerged as a postmodern, postcolonial city par excellence, facing new challenges stemming from the end of empire, economic downturn, and globalization. All the while, the city has been first and foremost a collection of neighborhoods, quartiers, where people of different classes, political orientations, nationalities, and races mingled. The stories of these people's lives - their fears, humor, pettiness, and humanity - in some ways stand at odds with the Paris famed as a center of romance, ideas, and refined culture. But these contradictions and paradoxes are exactly what have made Paris a city of constant fascination and inspiration for people - from tourists to intellectuals - around the globe.