“Qui regarde au fond de Paris a le vertige.”—Victor Hugo
[He who looks into the heart of Paris has vertigo.]

. . . and somehow that vertigo is intoxicating and inspiring. With it comes the promise of history and culture, an abiding cosmopolitanism, a feeling of possibility. Or isn’t it pretty to think so? There is also an inescapability of loss and the inevitability of wasting decay.

Paris has inspired the work of more than two centuries of American artists and intellectuals. From Thomas Jefferson to James Baldwin these figures have chronicled the attraction and conflict between European and American social and cultural values.

This class will examine the relationship between a group of expatriate American writers and the city that inspired them. We will pay particular attention to what Gertrude Stein labeled “the lost generation,’ reading works by Hemingway, James, Fitzgerald, Pound, and others as we attempt to understand how the shared experience of living in Paris, with its feeling of liberation and limitation, shaped some of the most important American literature of the early twentieth century.

In addition to focusing on analytic and reading practices, as a “W” course, Americans in Paris will also help students develop and improve their writing. Students will be asked to submit weekly written responses to readings as well as two 5-6 page papers during the quarter. As a class we will also be producing a literary “magazine,” which will include book reviews, brief biographies, textual analysis, and more. The research, writing, and editing requirements for this project will be shared among group members.