FREN 3720 - French Realms of Memory

(CA-AS) Satisfies Option 1

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: FREN 2310 or permission of instructor.

E. Traverso.

Vichy, the Holocaust, the Algerian War, and May 68 are crucial events that continuously resurge in France, where they are reinterpreted through the prism of the present. Far from being monolithic, this process of reworking the past is plural and conflictive, alternating moments of forgetting, anamnesis and depression, and shaking old national narratives (the so called roman national). This seminar will analyze different dimensions of French remembrance, taking into account historical works, novels, and films. It will explore French historical consciousness as a factory of multiple, changing identities.