FRN 395-01 - Advanced Special Topic: French Orientalism: Empire, Sexuality and Exchange in Literature and the Arts

4 credits (Fall Term 2)

This course will explore representations of French Orientalism in prose, poetry and theatre, as well as dance, music, painting, travel writing and nineteenth-century periodicals. Tracing Orientalist strains in Romanticism, Realism and Decadent Literature, we will seek to understand the interplay of imagination and reality in French cultural production, marked by exchange with the Middle East and South Asia. We will deconstruct notions of gender, sexuality, commerce and class in French society, and unpack colonialist and imperialist discourses, showing that “French identity” and by extension the notion of “Empire,” are not fixed and unchanging entities in French literary history and the arts, but rather a set of representations that are constantly shifting and adapting to reflect economic and political interdependence.

Prerequisite: FRN 312 or FRN 313.
Instructor: A. Lee