Representing Race at Cultural Sites: Paris in the 21st Century
2008 Exploration Seminar in France

Program Director: Caroline Simpson (English)
Dates of Instruction: August 26 - September 18, 2008

Students in this course will engage the question of how racial difference is managed at key national cultural sites in Paris, France, where the recent opening and reception of two museums in Paris, the Musee du Quai Branly (MQB) and The National Center of the History of Immigration, have prompted much debate about the impact of race on the expression of French national identity.

Paris, a city which has prided itself on its modern cosmopolitanism, is also a good starting point for thinking through the broader patterns in representing racial difference in the West in the modern era. In modern visual and literary movements in the West, the “primitive” racialized figure or culture is often imagined as a liberating alternative to the alienating experience of modern urban life, even as the fascination with the ideas and customs of racialized cultures also clearly tended toward commodification, or the consumption of things emptied of material and historical contexts. This tendency toward commodifcation of racial and cultural difference was, more importantly, simultaneous with the emergence of museums and galleries as vital, nationally funded sites for telling a grand history of culture. Thus, we will consider national cultural sites in Paris as important representational models showing us something of how the modern nation-state had tried, and continues to try, to manage or understand racial difference.
           
We will start at the Louvre, and in particular in its African and Asian art exhibit, trying to map what has become the Western standard for art appreciation of other cultures. But we will focus much of our attention on two proposed sites, the Musee du Quai Branly (MQB) and The National Center of the History of Immigration, both of which have tried to offer correctives or addendums to that standard. Students will draw on these national cultural sites and their practices to think about the deeper significance and impact of their representation of racial difference for French national identity. Final projects may be either critical or creative, but will in some way try to capture and perhaps respond to the meaning of our collective exploration of these sites.

Participants will receive five credits in English 302 or CHID 471 Europe Study Abroad (I&S). Participants should check with their advisors to determine how these credits can count towards departmental  requirements.

Student costs:  
$3,200
$200 IPE Fee
Additional costs include: Round trip airfare to France, meals, health insurance, course materials and personal expenses.

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