FREN 6655

French Memories:Realms of a Divided Past

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2015-2016.

How many layers of French history does the highly controversial slogan Je suis Charlie unearth?  Over the last three decades, France has experienced a huge debate on memory that has put into question its national past: Vichy, the Holocaust, the Algerian War, and finally May 68 are crucial events that continuously resurge into the public sphere, where they are reinterpreted through the prism of present worries and sensibilities.  Far from monolithic, this process of memory construction is necessarily plural and conflictive, alternating moments of forgetting, anamnesis and obsession.  It shakes the traditional procedures of history writing as well as old national myths and narratives (so called roman national).  In this seminar, we will analyze different dimensions of French remembrance, taking into account historical works, novels, films and other media productions.  The purpose of such an interdisciplinary investigation is not to establish an exhaustive inventory of the French historical consciousness, but rather to explore the "Hexagon" as a factory of multiple, changing identities.

When Offered Fall.

Comments Conducted in French.

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