French 311HD - Life/Letters Interwar France

Study of French society, politics, literature, film, and visual arts between the two world wars as markers of France's complex relationship to the modern world: How did the optimism of les années folles evolve into the repression of the Vichy era? What was the role of the writer and artist in France's changing political and social climate? How did gender, race, ethnic, and class differences mark the period? What issues still resonate today? Authors may include: Cocteau, Breton, Colette, Weil, Beauvoir, Sartre, Césaire, Brasillach, Némirovsky, de Gaulle; plus films: Un chien andalou, L'Atalante, Regain, Princesse Tam Tam, La règle du jeu.

Prereq: Two of the following courses: French 215, French 219, French 225, French 230.