NYU-PARIS / NYU-DEPARTMENT OF MEDIA, CULTURE, AND COMMUNICATION COURSE TITLE: Topics in Globalization: Creating French Culture COURSE NO.: (NYU) MCC-GE 2384-001 PROFESSOR RODNEY BENSON SCHEDULE Tuesday, June 14 – Tuesday, July 5, 2016 ROOM NYU-Paris Seminar Room TBD OFFICE HOURS By Appointment CONTACT rodney.benson@nyu.edu COURSE DESCRIPTION France is at the center of debates about the reach and character of cultural globalization: its government has taken the lead in opposing U.S. efforts to define cultural exchange in purely market terms, even as French publics have often welcomed American popular culture and political ideas. In this intensive three-week course, the city of light and its environs will be our laboratory. We will travel across Paris and beyond to meet with creative professionals, artists, and activists and experience French culture in the making. In so doing, we will deepen our understanding of the global, national, and local processes shaping how contemporary cultures are being created, consumed, remixed, diffused, and transformed. TEACHING / COURSE OBJECTIVES * to increase students’ understanding of how media differ around the world (with a particular emphasis on France) and to develop a deeper appreciation of global cultural differences; * to provide students with knowledge of the major descriptive and explanatory theories of cultural globalization, media policy, and cultural production; * to help students develop skills in primary and secondary research about the creative cultural activity of their choosing (music, art, cinema, popular entertainment, journalism, etc.); * to provide students with the opportunity to hone their writing and oral presentation skills, working both individually and/or in teams. 2 TEXTS Readings will be distributed on NYU Classes in pdf form. EVALUATION All Assignments are to be completed in English, but students may use Frenchlanguage source materials. 20% Active participation (attendance, informed discussion, final presentation) You are expected to complete all assigned readings and to be prepared to discuss readings in class. You are strongly encouraged to use active reading practices: i.e., printing out all readings, underlining key passages, and writing your comments/reactions in the margins. 25% Forum Comments Purpose and focus of each comment is specified in the syllabus. All forum comments should be 250-300 words. 15% In-Class Reading Summary/Critique Each student will summarize and critique one week’s readings, drawing on a 750 word short essay posted on the course Forum. 40% Final Project (15 page paper or approved multimedia project) This project will draw on primary and secondary sources to analyze in detail some aspect of contemporary French media culture. Additional information about this assignment will be provided. USE OF COMPUTERS AND CELL PHONES Use of Cell phones for texting or any other purpose is not permitted during class. Computers may be used for taking notes or for approved research, but not for email or non-class related browsing. Use of either cell phones or computers during class time for non-course related purposes will negatively affect your participation grade. GRADING POLICIES A = excellent. Outstanding work in all respects. Your completed assignments are thoroughly researched, appropriately documented, logically organized and rhetorically convincing. Your analysis is not only comprehensive and sound, but creative and original. In short, you not only get it, but begin to see through it! B = good. Your understanding of course materials is complete and thorough, and there is at least some evidence of your own critical intelligence at work. You demonstrate basic competence in research, writing and oral presentation. 3 C = barely adequate. Your writing is vague and incoherent or riddled with grammatical or spelling errors. You do not make proper use of source materials, and there is little depth or concreteness to your research or analysis. Your understanding of concepts and ideas is incomplete and often misguided, but there is at least some evidence that you “got” something from this course. D = unsatisfactory. Work exhibits virtually no understanding or even awareness of basic concepts and themes of course. Your participation has been inadequate or superficial. Either you have not been paying attention or you have not been making any effort. F= failed. Work was not submitted or completed according to the basic parameters outlined in the course syllabus (basic requirements for word length, topical focus, types and number of sources, documentation of primary source materials, etc.). Grades are calculated according to the following scale: 94-100 A; 90-93 A-; 87-89 B+; 83-86 B; 80-82 B-; 77-79 C+; 73-76 C; 70-72 C-; 67-69 D+; 63-66 D; 60-62 D-; 0-59 F LATE POLICY: Assignments turned in late will be downgraded up to one full grade per day late. You are responsible for keeping a digital copy of all assignments. PLAGIARISM POLICY Plagiarism is strictly prohibited. Cheating or plagiarizing the work of another will result in an automatic “F” on the exam or assignment. Additionally, departmental and university policy permit harsher actions, if warranted. “Plagiarism, one of the gravest forms of academic dishonesty in university life, whether intended or not, is academic fraud. In a community of scholars, whose members are teaching, learning and discovering knowledge, plagiarism cannot be tolerated. Plagiarism is failure to properly assign authorship to a paper, a document, an oral presentation, a musical score and/or other materials that are not your original work. You plagiarize when, without proper attribution, you do any of the following: Copy verbatim from a book, an article or other media; Download documents from the Internet; Purchase documents; Report from other’s oral work; Paraphrase or restate someone else’s facts, analysis and/or conclusions; Copy directly from a classmate or allow a classmate to copy from you.” (NYU Steinhardt School of Education Statement on Academic Integrity) 4 DETAILED SCHEDULE (subject to revision: *readings may be added or subtracted and times of site visits or guests speakers may be changed depending on availability) WEEK I Tuesday, 6/14: Welcome Dinner 1: Wednesday, 6/15 Seminar + Flexible Site Visits Introduction/Creating French Culture: 10:30 am – 12:30 pm *Sarah Waters, “Globalization and French Identity,” pp. 14-50 in Between Republic and Market: Globalization and Identity in Contemporary France (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012). *Aurélie Filippetti, “Is Cultural Policy Still Possible? The French Cultural Exception in the 21st century,” Address to Princeton Woodrow Wilson School, February 18, 2015, available at: http://aureliefilippetti.eu/index.php?post/2015/02/18/Woodrow-Wilson-Schoolfor-public-policy-and-international-affairs-de-Princeton-%3A-Une-politiqueculturelle-est-elle-encore-possible-L-exception-culturelle-en-France-au21%C3%A8me-si%C3%A8cle. Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 9 am Thurs.): Spend at least 2 hours Wed afternoon/evening exploring the city and taking notes, with or without the professor or teaching assistant. To facilitate multiple explorations, I will lead one group and our course TA will lead another, but you are also free to explore on your own. After you have finished, post field notes of your observations of the intersection and mixing of French, American, and other global cultures in Paris. Suggestions for places to explore: The Marais, Montmartre, Champs-Elysées, Chinatown (13th), Belleville, and/or “Benjamin’s” Shopping Arcades (Passage Choiseul, Passsage des Panoramas, Passage du Grand Cerf, Passage Moliere). 2: Thursday, 6/16 Seminar + Site Visit Experiences of Globalization in Paris: 10:30 am – 12:30 pm *Ulf Hannerz. 1990. “Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture,” Theory, Culture & Society 7: 237-251. *Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Harvard Belknap Press, 1999), excerpts; and/or David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (Routledge, 2005), excerpts *Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange (Rowman and Littlefield: 2009), ch. 3. Site Visit to Trocadero and Eiffel Tower: 2:30-4:30 pm Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 9 am Friday, 6/17): Discuss how and why “intellectual activity” retains a major place in French media culture. 5 3: Friday, 6/17 Seminar + Site Visit French Intellectuals and the Media: 10:30 am – 12:30 pm Screening: INA Online TV Archives of French philosophy shows *Tamara Chaplin, Turning on the Mind: French Philosophers on Television (Chicago, 2011), excerpts Site Visit to Latin Quarter (Sorbonne and Pantheon): 2:30-3:30 pm Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 11 pm, Sunday, 6/19): Engaging with Monday’s readings, discuss the distinctive histories and characteristics of French popular music. WEEK II 4: Monday, 6/20 Seminar Popular Culture and Music in France: 10:30 am - 12:30 pm *Tom Perchard, After Django: Making Jazz in Postwar France (Michigan, 2015), excerpts *David Looseley, Popular Music in Contemporary France (Bloomsbury, 2003), excerpts NO Post-Class Forum Assignment 5: Tuesday, 6/21 Site Visit All-Day Site Visit: Fête de la musique Walking Tour 11-12:30 / Lunch Discussion 12:30-2:00 pm Continue exploring on own during afternoon and evening *Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 9 am Wednesday): Write field notes on observations at Fête de la musique. **Also be sure to read at minimum Bourdieu or Coulangeon/Lemel AND Lamont/Thévenot. 6: Wednesday, 6/22 Seminar Cultural Tastes in France and the United States: 10:30 am – 12:30 pm *Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Space,” in Practical Reason (Stanford, 1998), pp. 1-13. *Philippe Coulangeon & Yannick Lemel, “Is ‘Distinction’ really outdated? Questioning the meaning of the omnivorization of musical taste in contemporary France,” Poetics 35, 2-3 (2007), pp. 93-111. *Michèle Lamont and Laurent Thévenot, “Comparing Cultures and Polities: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States,” in M. Lamont and L. Thévenot, eds., Comparative Cultural Sociology (Cambridge, 2000). *Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 9 am Thursday): Drawing on today’s readings, write a critical commentary on how French cultural tastes differ within France and how they differ in general from the United States. 6 7: Thursday, 6/23 Seminar + Site Visit Immigrant popular cultures and experiences in France Screening “La Haine” (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995): 10:30 am – 12:30 pm Site Visit 2:00 – 5:00 pm: Gare du Nord to St-Denis: visit to the cathedral and environs *Valérie Orlando, “From rap to raï in the mixing bowl: Beur hip hop culture and banlieue cinema in urban France,” Journal of Popular Culture 36.3 (2003), pages 395-415. *Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 9 am Friday): Write field notes on the day’s activities (screening and site visit). 8: Friday, 6/24 Seminar Immigration and the ‘beur’ novel in France: 10:30 am – 12:30 pm *Kathryn Kleppinger, Branding the ‘Beur’ Author: Minority Writing and the Media in France (Liverpool, 2015), excerpts. *Martin Schain, The Politics of Immigration in France, Britain, and the United States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), excerpts. *Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 11 pm Sunday, 6/26): Drawing on Friday and Monday readings, write reflections on unique history of immigration and contemporary beur literature and radio in France. WEEK III 9: Monday, 6/27 Site Visit Site Visit to BeurFM: 3-5 pm *Bridget Knapper, “BeurFM, agent of integration or ghettoization?” The Web Journal of French Media Studies 6 (2003), available at: http://wjfms.ncl.ac.uk/enframes.htm. *Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 9 am Tuesday): Reflect on visit to BeurFM and, drawing on Tuesday’s readings, identify differences within French journalism as well as between French and US journalism. 10: Tuesday, 6/28 Seminar + Site Visit News Media in France: 10:30 – 12:30 *Rodney Benson ‘The French and Journalistic Fields’, in Shaping Immigration News: A French-American Comparison (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 21-67 *Angèle Christin, Between Clicks and Pulitzers: How French and American Web Journalists Decide What Counts (Princeton sociology dissertation, 2015), excerpts Afternoon Site Visit (2:30 – 4:00 p.m.): Libération, Le Monde/Le Huffington Post, Mediapart.fr, or Le Monde Diplomatique *Post-Class Forum Assignment: Write field notes on site visit. Reflect on both the differences and similarities you observed between French and US journalistic practices and ideas. 7 11: Wednesday, 6/29 Site Visit All-Day Field trip to French-German cultural channel Arte (Strasbourg) *Nora Berning, “The Cultural Television Channel Arte and the (Non-) existence of a Cross-border Franco-German Public Sphere,” The Web Journal of French Media Studies 8 (2010), available at : http://wjfms.ncl.ac.uk/enframes.htm. Post-Class Forum Assignment (due by 9 am Thursday): Write field notes on site visit. 12: Thursday, 6/30 Site Visit Arthouse Movie Theaters in Paris: Site Visits to Le Champo, La Pagode, La Studio Galande *Aurélie Pinto, “ArtHouse Movie Theaters in Paris and New York” NO Post-Class Forum Assignment 13: Friday, 7/1 NO CLASS: Time to work on final projects WEEK IV 14. Monday, 7/4 Final Project Presentations: 2:00 – 5:00 pm Farewell Dinner, 7:00 pm Tuesday, 7/5 Depart 8 Additional Recommended Reading (DRAFT) Michèle Lamont, “How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida,” American Journal of Sociology 93, 3 (1987), pp. 584-622. Sudhir Hazareesingh, How the French Think: An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People (Basic, 2015). Diana Crane, The Production of Culture (Sage, 1999). David Hesmondhalgh, “Theories of Culture, Theories of Cultural Production,” pp. 3763 in The Cultural Industries (Sage, 2013). Trica Danielle Keaton and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, eds., Black France / France Noire : The History and Politics of Blackness (Duke, 2012), excerpts Paul Silverman, Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race, and Nation (Indiana, 2004), excerpts Richard A. Peterson and N. Anand. “The production of culture perspective.” Annual Review of Sociology 30: 311-334. Pierre Bourdieu, “The political field, the social science field, and the journalistic field,” in R. Benson and E. Neveu, eds., Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2005). Silvio Waisbord and Nancy Morris. “Rethinking Media Globalization and State Power.” In N. Morris and S. Waisbord, eds., Media and Globalization: Why the State Matters (Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), pp. vii-xvi Daniel C. Hallin and Paolo Mancini. Comparing Media Systems (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), ch. 2 James Curran and Myung-Jin Park. “Beyond globalization theory.” In J. Curran and M-J. Park, eds., De-Westernizing Media Studies (London: Routledge, 2000). Rodney Benson, ““La fin du Monde? Tradition and Change in the French Press.” French Politics, Culture & Society 22, 1 (2004): 108-126. Riadh Ferjani, “Arabic-language television in France: post-colonial transnationality,” Global Media and Communication 5.3 (2009), pages 405-428. Matthew Jordan, Le Jazz: Jazz and French Cultural Identity (Illinois, 2010), excerpts 9 Jeffrey H. Jackson, Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris (Duke, 2003), excerpts Andy Fry, Paris Blues: African American Music and French Popular Culture, 19201960 (Chicago, 2014), excerpts Edmund White, The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, 2008 Jeremy Mercer, Time was soft there: A Paris sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Literary France. Beth Epstein, Collective Terms: Race, Culture, and Community in a State-Planned City in France (Berghahn Books, 2011)