Vassar Moodle

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.

Federal and state programs have transformed American cities over the past century. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) “redlined” entire neighborhoods as “hazardous” for investment. After World War II, federal funding for “urban renewal” transformed U.S. cities from 1949 to 1974, involving “slum clearance” of neighborhoods considered blighted by authorities, even if many were vibrant communities. Urban renewal aimed to create modern public housing, freeways, expressways, cultural centers, recreational and educational facilities, office complexes, and more. Those displaced by eviction numbered in the millions, mainly affecting the working class, people of color, and immigrants. In many cities, urban revitalization and gentrification now lead to public-private forms of social displacement. After examining the complex links between these historical and current processes, students use urban theory to explain and analyze cities of their choice.