Paris Eiffel Tower
Paris: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Romantic City
80 :  The Cultural History of Paris
Fall 2022
Class No: 30748
222 Wheeler
MWF
N. Paige
12-1pm

This class will offer students a historical exploration of the urban artifact that is Paris. Proceeding “forensically,” we will peel back what is visible to today’s observer in order to uncover the competing ambitions, economic pressures, and ideologies that have produced one of the most visited cities in the world. Thus, students can expect to gain knowledge of the city’s built environment and how and why it looks like it does. We will be reading a variety of texts (novels, plays, and memoirs or parts thereof; poems; ephemeral pieces; selections from historical and sociological studies), viewing a number of films, and looking at a lot of visual works (paintings, engravings, maps). A brief data science unit studying recent trends in gentrification will complete our semester.