Fall 2023 Graduate Schedule

THE FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE

IFST-GA 2810 (Topics in French Culture and Society), cross-listed with HIST-GA 1500-001 (Topics in French Cultural History).

Taught in English by Audrey Célestine, Associate Professor of History, and Madina Thiam, Assistant Professor of History

Monday, 9:30-12:00 PM. IFS Classroom.

From the 16th century onwards, French imperial expansion, led through companies, conquest, and colonies, spread across the worlds of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, impacting millions of lives. This history has generated an abundant scholarship, including a robust historiographical revival in the past two decades. This graduate seminar covers the history of the French Colonial Empire, from the Haitian revolution to the contemporary era, with an emphasis on the French Atlantic. Themes include: slavery and its afterlives, both in the Caribbean and Africa; subjecthood and citizenship; intersections between race, gender, and empire; intellectual, artistic and political movements such as Negritude, Surrealism, and Pan-Africanism; and debates and struggles around departmentalization, autonomy or independence for former colonies.

DE LA LUTTE DES CLASSES DANS LA LITTERATURE

IFST-GA 2530 (Cultural History of France: Literature and Society) Crosslisted with FREN-GA 1191-005

M 2:30pm-4:45pm; W 3:30pm-6PM

Taught in French by Edouard Louis, novelist, and Sylvaine Guyot, Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture.

À travers la lecture d'écrivains et d'écrivaines comme Émile Zola, James Baldwin, Violette Leduc, Alice Walker, Jean-Luc Lagarce ou encore Alan Hollinghurst (liste indicative), nous verrons comment la littérature (au sens large) s’est emparée et s'empare aujourd'hui de la question des classes sociales, des luttes et des impossibilités à lutter qui traversent ces classes, des rêves, des aspirations ou des privations qui définissent les individus selon leur place dans la société. Dans ce séminaire à deux voix – celle de l'écrivain qui est aussi penseur engagé, et celle de l'universitaire qui est aussi praticienne – les séances prendront diverses formes : discussions critiques, ateliers de réflexion théorique, travail de plateau, laboratoire d'écriture, enquêtes et tables rondes

COLONIAL TRANSURBANITY: ALGIERS, CASABLANCA, AND PARIS

Mondays, 5:00-7:30 PM, IFS Classroom

Taught in English by Jean-Louis Cohen, Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU. Cross-listed with Institute of Fine Arts

IFS DOCTORAL RESEARCH SEMINAR

IFST-GA 3710 

Tuesday 9:30-12:00PM

Taught in English by Edward Berenson, Professor of French Studies and History at NYU.

This four-semester seminar is restricted to doctoral students, and has three purposes.

The first and primary objective is to give you the opportunity to write a major research paper over the course of three semesters (fall 2023 [2 credits, 7 course meetings], spring 2024 [2 credits, 7 course meetings], fall 2024 [4 credits]), and the summer in-between. The course provides intermediary deadlines, and serves as a structure. It also serves as a community to enable you to write an article-length work of original research in the company of colleagues engaged with their own projects. The second goal is to explore and practice a number of professional writing and presentation practices. The third goal is to read various methodological articles as well as sample scholarship and proposals.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE AND ITS EMPIRE

Tuesdays, 5:00-7:30 PM, and Wednesdays, 9:30AM-12:00PM, IFS Classroom.

Taught in English by Edward Berenson, Professor of French Studies and History at NYU

This course focuses on the revolutionary period of modern France, a tumultuous and creative time, a time of revolution and reaction, republics and monarchies, liberalism and centralized power. We will study this period in three principal ways: by learning about the various regimes, politics, ideologies, and social patterns that marked the era; by reading texts written during this time; and by analyzing selected works of present-day historical scholarship that help us understand modern France.

LA FRANCE CONTEMPORAINE AU PRISME DE LA NON-FICTION CRÉATIVE

IFST-GA 1213 (Workshop on French Society in Transition)

Thursday, 9:30AM-12:00PM

Taught in French by Guillemette Faure, IFS Visiting Professor, Journalist at Le Monde magazine, and author of several books.

Ce cours propose une approche de la société française au prisme de la non-fiction créative. Qu’est-ce que la non-fiction créative peut nous apprendre de la société française que le journalisme ne sait faire? Chaque séance offrira un aperçu d’un aspect de la France contemporaine: les nouvelles moeurs de élites; la pauvreté à Paris; la culture culinaire; les conséquences du terrorisme; les secrets de famille; l’environnement; les questions de diversité ethnique et raciale.  Tout en explorant ces thèmes, les étudiant·es exploreront les techniques et les méthodes de l’écriture de non-fiction créative et réaliseront leur propre texte lié à la France contemporaine. Nous accueillerons plusieurs auteurs et autrices dans le cours.

BUILDING BETTER SOCIETIES: SOCIAL POLICIES IN EUROPE, 1870-1970

IFST-GA 1500 (Topics in French Cultural History), crosslisted with HIST-GA 2163 (Topics in European History)

Thursday, 2:00PM-4:45PM, IFS classroom.

Taught in English by Sandrine Kott, Professor of History, University of Geneva, Global Visiting Professor of History, NYU

A professor of modern European history at the University of Geneva and New York University, Sandrine Kott studies the history of philanthropy, reformism, social policies in France and Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her course will analyze the origins of the welfare states in Europe, their rise and construction, the different paths they took at the intersection of the local and the national, the private and the public.