Modernism in Paris

Start and End Dates for this course change from year to year. Please contact the Office of Global Education for more information.This course is both a study of Modernism as a broad cultural phenomenon and an encounter with the city of Paris. In each of the course's four weeks we will have twelve hours of class meetings, three museum visits, three guided walks, and one concert. Exploring Modernism as a cultural phenomenon that begins in a 'crisis of Tradition' we will concentrate on the period between 1900-1930, when Western civilization became a beehive of 'experiments' and 'revolutions' in all the arts and in society. Reading literary and philosophical texts, studying art works and artists' statements, we will not seek a unifying style to Modernism but a series of shared questions. Moreover, as we experience twenty-first century Paris and each other, we will try to understand the legacies of Modernism as they relate to our present. Readings include Eliot and Apollinaire, Proust and Kafka, Klee and Picasso, Pirandello, Weber, Benjamin and Breton. The course is conducted in English.