French & Francophone Studies

The “Belle Epoque” (1880-1914) evokes a specific place and time–Paris in and around 1900–and conjures images of ladies in big hats, sinuous architecture, bicycles speeding through the city and other progressive technologies, such as the Paris metro, the cinema, and, of course, the Eiffel Tower. But this period was also characterized by deep political instability and social upheavals and marked by massive colonial expansion, which brought a wealth of goods and peoples to the Metropole. In this seminar, we consider cultural sites, phenomena, and movements that define the Belle Epoque–the vibrant Parisian press, increasingly including women journalists, the Exposition Universelle of 1900, showcasing French colonialism in triumphant and disturbing ways, events such as the Dreyfus Affair, which mobilized the mass media, and artistic interventions, such as literary décadence, that disrupted aesthetic conventions and challenged social norms. Through a multidisciplinary cultural prism of literature, art, cinema, fashion, and the press, we uncover Belle Epoque Paris as a rich site of contradiction. Authors may include Apollinaire, Colette, Huysmans, Maupassant, Proust, Rachilde, Vivien, Zola. Susan Hiner.