Fall 2022 Graduate Schedule

LA BANDE DESSINÉE FRANCOPHONE: HISTOIRE, TECHNIQUE, ESTHETIQUE

Sylvain Venayre, IFS Visiting Professor, Professor of Contemporary History at the Université de Grenoble-Alpes, and BD scriptwriter 

First Seven Weeks, Sept.-Oct. Taught in French. 

La bande dessinée est aujourd’hui, en France, le marché le plus dynamique de l’édition. Ce succès est le produit d’une longue histoire, laquelle constituera le premier objet de ce cours. Nous rappellerons d’abord la lente gestation de la bande dessinée depuis les récits en images du xixe siècle, la définition d’une bande dessinée « franco-belge » au milieu du xxe siècle, la conquête progressive d’un public adulte à partir des années 1960. Puis nous aborderons les principales questions relatives à la bande dessinée francophone aujourd’hui : ses relations avec les arts voisins (caricature et photographie), la place croissante des femmes et du passé colonial, les formes nouvelles (autofiction ou reportage), la façon dont la bande dessinée permet de mettre en scène les connaissances historiques. 

GÉNÉALOGIE DES MUSIQUES HIP-HOP EN FRANCE

Karim Hammou, IFS Visiting Professor

Second Seven Weeks, Oct.-Dec. Taught in French.

Depuis le milieu des années 1990, on présente volontiers la France comme « le deuxième marché mondial du rap », après les États-Unis. Ce chiffre, à la pertinence contestée, résume le statut ambivalent des musiques hip-hop en France. D’un côté, il mêle nationalisme et exotisme : la fierté pour ce succès économique français se double d’un étonnement pour un genre musical associé aux minorités non-blanches. De l’autre, ce chiffre fantasmé met en lumière la singularité de l’ancrage du rap en France. Ce genre musical, né aux États-Unis, est devenu l’un des symboles de la France contemporaine à l’étranger, mais aussi des paradoxes d’une puissance impériale qui peine à regarder son histoire en face. Pourtant, avant le rap, d’autres genres musicaux ont mis en lumière la matrice coloniale de la culture française contemporaine : biguine, zouk, chaâbi, raï… Ce cours examinera l’histoire des musiques populaires associées aux minorités ethno-raciales en France hexagonale depuis les années 1960, à la lumière des outils conceptuels de la socio-histoire, de la sociologie des rapports de pouvoir et de la tradition interactionniste.

ARCHITECTURE UNDER VICHY : DISCOURSE, POLICY, AND DESIGN

Jean-Louis Cohen, Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU

Taught in English. Cross-listed with Institute of Fine Arts.

Very few structures were actually completed during the four years of Nazi Germany’s occupation of France, between June 1940 and the autumn of 1944. However, this relatively brief period, during which the government was based in the remote spa of Vichy, has been an extremely intense one in the realm of architecture and city-planning. While reorganizing the architectural profession and its academic cradle, the École des Beaux-Arts, the State took control of the built production and transformed legislation, favoring a wide spectrum of reconstruction plans in which innovative solutions where tolerated and sometimes encouraged.

If Marshall Pétain’s call for a “return to the soil” and a general climate unfavorable to Modernist architecture opened the way to conservative designs celebrating regional traditions, a number of radical designers were able to divert the official policies and propose functionalist schemes for the countryside. At the same time, research was undertaken on standardization and prefabrication, which later cast a long shadow on postwar France, as most of Vichy’s legislation remained effective after the Liberation. Among the many architects at work during this short yet busy period, the trajectories of Auguste Perret, Michel Roux-Spitz, Eugène Beaudouin, Gaston Bardet and Le Corbusier abound in revealing and overlooked projects. On a darker note, the impact of Vichy’s racial laws was brutal, and some architects participated without restraint to their implementation and the spoliation of the Jews.

All these aspects will be considered in the class. No previous knowledge of architecture is required. 

NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE AND ITS EMPIRE

Stéphane Gerson, Professor of French, French Studies and History at NYU 

This course is required of all M.A. and first-year Ph.D. students. Taught in English. Crosslisted with History Department.

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.

INTERNATIONALISMS OR GLOBALISM: EUROPE IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Sandrine Kott, Visiting Professor of History at NYU

Taught in English. Crosslisted with History Department.

During the 19th century, at the height of the construction of European nation-states, competing internationalisms became powerful ideologies in Europe. After the First World War, Europeans were at the forefront of the creation of various international organizations and associations. They aimed at organizing the world, prolonging or protecting their dominant position - especially for the colonial powers - but also challenging or overthrowing this order as in the case of international communist associations. These internationalist ideologies and the associations and organizations that carried them multiplied after the Second World War and during the Cold War. Nevertheless, European states and citizens played a less and less important role in them. This withdrawal reflects the declining position of Europeans in a so-called global world, but it is also the result of the rise of globalism as a new ideology from the 1970s onward.

FRENCH-SPEAKING MIGRANTS IN NYC: A RESEARCH SEMINAR IN SOCIOLOGY

Frédéric Viguier, Clinical Associate Professor of French Studies at NYU

Taught in French and English.

This goal of this course is three-fold: 1) offer a practical introduction to the methods of qualitative sociology to students with limited background in this discipline; 2) explore the migrant experience from the unusual angle of privileged migrants; 3) have students carry out their own empirical research project on privileged French-speaking migrants in NYC.