ARTH 280-601
City of Paris
Instructor: James Hargrove
MW 5-6:15

Course Description

Between the Revolution and the Great War, the city of Paris emerged as the most influential progenitor of modern cultural ideas in the West. Today, we consider this almost reflexively. And yet, at the time, London was the center of greater financial and imperial dominion, Berlin the center of greater military and industrial might, and Rome the capital of Christendom. All of these factors exercised enormous influence on the world in the modern age. Still, Paris remains at the center of our imagination for that period and it does so through the power of imagery and cultural ideas. Looking at a range of artistic media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture along with passages of literature, philosophy and social history, this course will explore the cultural creation of a city retroactively christened the Capital of the 19th Century.

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