Topics in modern french literature and culture: global paris

Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

One intermediate subject in French, or permission of instructor.

Only a handful of Western cities can rival Paris's mythic status as "City of Light," "City of Love," "Capital of the Nineteenth Century," and "Capital of Modernity." And yet visitors to Paris are often shocked by just how small the "great" city actually is. This course will investigate Paris's oversized status as a global capital by looking at the events, transformations, cultures, and arts for which the city is known. It will investigate Paris as a magnet for immigrants and how the city has been transformed by their presence. And it will look at Paris as a mythic place, dreamed of and reconstructed as far away as Bollywood and Las Vegas. This course will help us better understand Paris and its place in French and global cultures today.

All class sessions are mandatory. Students are responsible for completing all assignments on time. Classes consist of a mixture of informal lecture and discussion.

All work will be completed in French. Grades will be based on the following:

Late assignments will lose one full letter grade for each day past the deadline. Assignments handed in a week late will automatically receive no credit. No extensions will be granted after an assignment's due date has passed.

Cell phones must be silenced (not just placed in vibrate mode) and put away during class time. You may use laptops / tablets, but only to take notes or access information relevant to the topic at hand. If used for other purposes, laptops / tablets will be banned.

Enrollment limited to 18 for pedagogical purposes. Priority will be given to pre-registered students, including pre-registered undergraduates who were cut from the same class the previous semester due to the enrollment cap. In case of over enrollment, preference given to pre-registered declared French majors, minors and concentrators, followed by juniors, seniors, sophomores, continuing students, and freshmen (in that order), who attend the first day of class.

Students are expected to adhere to MIT's Academic Integrity policies. All work (research papers, weekly papers, presentations) must be completed independently, unless otherwise cleared by the instructor. Students are encouraged to discuss the readings and their projects with each other (they may, for example, want to practice their presentations for their classmates or have a classmate look over a draft of their creative project), but they are individually responsible for all written work.

Violating the Academic Integrity policy in any way (e.g., plagiarism) will result in official Institute sanction. Possible sanctions include receiving a failing grade on the assignment, being assigned a failing grade in the course, having a formal notation of disciplinary action placed on your MIT record, suspension from the Institute, and expulsion from the Institute for very serious cases.

Please review the Academic Integrity policy and related resources (e.g., working under pressure; how to paraphrase, summarize, and quote; etc.) and contact me if you have any questions about appropriate citation methods, the degree of collaboration that is permitted, or anything else related to the Academic Integrity of this course.

Mabanckou, Alain. Bleu-Blanc-Rouge. Presence Africaine Edition, 1998. ISBN: 9782708708136.

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