Undergraduate Courses

FOW 4540
Franco-American Cultural Wars

Introduction - Text - Policies
Additional Comments

Introduction

Through the study of literary texts and examples selected from the visual arts this course will trace a shift in the cultural balance of power between the United States and France. The course begins with an examination of the nineteenth-century American sense of inferiority before the France’s achievements in literature and painting, and then will trace how a variety of aesthetic developments and political events will precipitate the slow decline of French preeminence and the inexorable rise of twentieth-century American dominance in the cultural as well as political realms.

Text

1) Henry James. The American
2) Robert Herbert. Impressionism (selections)
3) Gertrude Stein. Three Lives
4) Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises
5)Simone de Beauvoir. The Mandarins
6) Jean-Paul Sartre. What is Literature?
7) Sandler, Irving. Triumph of American Painting: a History of Abstract Expressionism (selections)
8) Guilbert, Serge. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art (selections)
9) Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room
10) Sollers, Philippe. Women
11) Echnoz, Jean. Lake
12) Auster, Paul. New York Tales

Policies

• Requirements and Grading. There will be three five page essays worth 75% of the grade. Each paper will be comparative in nature. (At this point I would provide the dates when the essays would be due). Topics for the essays will be suggested, but each student has the right to develop his/her own theme after consultation with the teacher. There will be a final exam consisting of identifications based on the texts we have studied. This exam will be worth 25% of the grade.

• Grading scale. A=92-100; A-=90-91; B+=87-89; B= 83-86; B-= 80-82; C+= 77-79; C= 73-76; C-=70-72; D+=67-69; D=63-66; D-=60-62; F=59 and below.

Additional Comments

• The course will fulfill the Gordon Rule requirement of at least 3334 words.

• All students are bound by the Academic Honor Code in all their academic work.
  Please see the Student Handbook for details.

• Note: A student with any type of disability which might interfere with his/her performance in the course should see the instructor during the first week of the semester so that we can accommodate his/her needs.

Course Outline

• Weeks I and II) Introduction: 19^th century travel practices, literary and pictorial background.
  The American
• Week III) Discussion of Impressionism with particular emphasis on Americans involved in the movement. Impressionism, Chapter I: "Paris Transformed," pp. 1-33; Chapter IV: "Theater, Opera, Dance," pp. 93-130; Chapter VI: "Suburban Leisure," pp. 195-210.
• Week IV) Three Lives
• Week V) The Sun Also Rises
• Week VI) The Mandarins
• Week VII) What Is Literature. Chapter IV: "The Situation of the Writer in 1947," pp. 203-250.
• Week VIII) The Triumph of American Painting; a History of Abstract Expressionism. Chapter II: "The Imagination of Disaster," pp. 29-44; Chapter VIII: "Jackson Pollock," pp. 102-122; Chapter XI: "The Color-Field Painters," pp. 148-158.
• Week IX) How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. Introduction, pp. 1-17; Chapter III: "The Creation of an American Avant-Garde, 1945-1947," pp. 101-140; Chapter IV: "Success: How New York Stole Modernism from the Parisians," pp. 165-195.
• Week X) Giovanni’s Room
• Week XI) Women
• Week XII) Lake
• Week XIII and XIV) New York Tales, and Conclusion