Dr. Nancy Fitch
History 409, Section 1, Schedule # 19538
Tuesday, 4:00-6:45 p.m.
H-121
Humanities 820M
Office Phone: 714-278-2964
Email: nfitch@fullerton.edu
Webpage: http://faculty.fullerton.edu/nfitch
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Prerequisite for the course: History 110B
This course will explore the history of Paris from around 1830 until 1900. It is roughly organized around the life’s work of French novelist Emile Zola, who published a series of novels exploring various époques and aspects of Parisian life during this period. This course is not, however, devoted solely to his works and will involve an interdisciplinary analysis of the city during this period. Specific attention will be paid to Hausmann’s reconstruction of the city during the Second Empire and its impact on working class and bourgeois life, the rise of Bohemian Paris, the politics of defeat (following the Franco-
Prussian war and the Paris Commune), various Parisian scandals, and the numerous international expositions held in the city in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
LEARNING GOALS
--To gain a good understanding of Parisian economic, social, political, and cultural developments during the Nineteenth Century
--To obtain an introduction to some representative French literature in translation
--To acquire an introduction to 19 th
century French art, literature, and photography
--To understand the economics of the built environment in the social, economic, and political history of 19 th
century Paris
--To explore gender as a category of historical analysis
--To hone analytical, critical, and writing skills through the use of primary sources— artifacts, literature, documents, art, newspapers, cartoons, music, and eyewitness accounts

REQUIRED READING [This is your core reading list of books, and they are available at the "Little Professor Book Center", 725 N. Placentia Avenue, Fullerton, CA 92632;
Phone: (714) 996-3133; Fax: (714) 528-1888; E-mail: lpbc@earthlink.net
]
--Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil (selections) [Blackboard]
--Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen (selections) [Blackboard]
--David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity
--Henri Murger, Scenes from the Life in Bohemia (Selections) [Blackboard]
--Mary Louise Roberts, Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-siècle France
--Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois
Life
--Emile Zola,
L’Assomoir
--Emile Zola, The Belly of Paris
--Emile Zola, The Ladies Paradise
--Some additional reading indicated in the syllabus and provided by the instructor via
Blackboard
GRADING
1
ST
Mid-term
2 nd
Mid-term
Final
Class Participation and In-Class Work
Total
25%
25%
35%
15%
100%
Final Grades will be based on the plus/minus grading system as follows :
100%
93-99%
90-92%
87-89%
A+
A
A-
B+
83-86%
80-82%
77-79%
73-76%
70-72%
67-69%
B
B-
C+
C
C-
D+
63-66%
60-62%
59% and below
D
D-
F
Graduate students must also write a 10-15 page historiographical essay or a primarysource based paper on a course topic that is mutually agreeable to both of us. In addition, all of their written and oral work must be at a significantly higher level than that expected of an undergraduate students.
2

ASSESSMENT
Your grades on the take-home essays will be based on three major, closely related criteria.
1. Use of relevant class material, including readings, lectures, discussions, and films.(evidence)
2. Expression of ideas in a clear, concise, and engaging prose (style)
3. Development of an argument or point of view that is pertinent to the issue at hand and that has breadth, coherence, and insight (interpretation)
These criteria will translate into grades as follows:
A: excellent in all three areas. Offers an insightful argument based on ample, sound evidence.
B: good. Strong in all three areas or notable strengths in one balanced by weaknesses in another.
C: average. Adequate performance in one or more areas offset by serious weakness in others that leaves presentation fragmented, unclear, or narrow.
D: poor. Notable problems in all three areas. Remedial work needed to improve substantive understanding or basic communication.
F: unacceptable. Serious flaws in all three areas.
No evident engagement in the assignment.
3

WEEKLY COURSE OUTLINE
Tuesday, August 26
1. Introduction: “Paris: Capital of Modernity”
Iconic Paris
Imaginary Paris
Modernism and Modernity
Required Reading
--Introduction to Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air
--Introduction to David Harvey, Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century
Tuesday, September 2
2. “The Myths of Modernity”
The Bourgeoisification of the City: Streets, Boulevards, and Public Spaces of
Spectacle
Contagion and Poverty: Immigration and the Cholera Epidemic of the 1830s
Required Reading
--Harvey, “The Myths of Modernity: Balzac’s Paris”
--Seigel, “The Boundaries of Bohemia” and “A Country Explored: Murger”
--Murger, selections
Tuesday, September 9
3. “Dreaming the Body Politic:” Parisian Politics and Culture in the Early 19 th
Century
Barricades: Parisians Take to the Streets
Required Reading
-Harvey, “Dreaming the Body Politic: Revolutionary Politics
and Utopian Schemes 1830-1848”
--Seigel, “Politics, Fantasy, Identity: Bohemia in the Revolution of 1848”
--Murger, selections
--Zola, Money (recommended, but not required)
4

Tuesday, September 16
4. Hausmann’s Paris: Urban Renewal and the Making of a Bourgeois
Capital
Constructing a Riot-proof City
Financing Urban Reconstruction
Is Urban Reconstruction the Same Thing as Urban Renewal?
Required Reading
--Harvey, Part Two:
“The Organization of Space Relations”
“Money, Credit, and Finance”
“Rent and the Propertied Interest”
“The State”
“Abstract and Concrete Labor”
“The Buying and Selling of Labor Power”
“The Condition of Women”
“The Reproduction of Labor Power”
Tuesday, September 23
5. The Contradictions of Modernity in Baudelaire’s Paris
The Flaneur
Antidotes to Modernity: Opium and Wine
Paris Spleen
Required Reading
--Seigel, Ch. 4, “The Poet as Dandy and Bohemian: Baudelaire”
--Baudelaire, Selections from Paris Spleen
--Baudelaire, Selections from Flowers of Evil
--Analysis of Charles Marville’s photographs (from various sources)
Tuesday, September 30
6. The Belly of Paris
**FIRST PAPER DUE** (The strengths and weaknesses of The Belly of Paris as a representation of the politics and economics of Hausmann’s urban reconstruction)
Required Reading
--Emile Zola, The Belly of Paris
5

Tuesday, October 7
7. The Other Bohemia and Hausmann’s Failure
Alexandre Privat—“the master of blague ”
The Paris of the Goncourt Brothers
Paris in Flames
Required Reading
--Harvey, “The Geopolitics of Urban Transformation,” and
“The Building of the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur”
--Seigel, “The Other Bohemia and Its Uses,” “Friends and Enemies,” and
“’A Fatal Scent of Liberty’: Bohemia and the Commune of 1871”
--Excerpts from the Goncourt brothers
Tuesday, October 14
8. Consumerism, Spectacle, and Leisure
Boulevard Life
The Development of Department Stores
Theatre and Spectacle
The Exposition of 1867
Required Reading
--Harvey, “Consumerism, Spectacle, and Leisure,” “Community and Class,”
“Natural Relations,” and “Rhetoric and Representation”
--Seigel, “Publicity and Fantasy: The World of the Cabarets”
Tuesday, October 21
9. Public Worlds and Inner Lives
Degeneration
Anti-Semitism
Narcissism
Making sense of gender difference
Required Reading
--Harvey, “Science and Sentiment: Modernity and Tradition”
--
Seigel, “Compulsion and Disorganization” and “Cults of the Self”
--Michael Wilson, “’Sans les femmes, qu’est-ce qui nous resterait?’:
Gender and Transgression in Bohemian Montmarte,” in Body Guards
Tuesday, October 28
10. Two Paris’, Two Cultures
**SECOND PAPER DUE** (The Strengths and Weaknesses of The Ladies Paradise and L’Assomoir as representations of late 19 th Century Paris)
[Note: Each half of the class will read and write on one of the Zola novels then share their findings with the other half. This class section will explore the contradictions in Zola as well as in contemporary understandings of the ideas and culture in this period.]
6

11. The Affair
The Dreyfus Affair and the Franco/French War
Masculinity and the Dreyfus Affair
Zola—“The Fat Pornographer”
French Popular Press – “The Web” of Late 19 th Century France?
Required Reading
--Christopher Forth, “Masculine Performances: Alfred Dreyfus and the Paradox
of the Jewish Soldier” from Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French
Manhood”
--Christopher Forth, “Moral Contagion and the Will: The Crisis of Masculinity in
Fin-de-siècle France,” from Contagion: Historical and Cultural Studies
--Nancy Fitch, “Mass Culture, Mass Parliamentary Politics, and Modern
Anti-Semitism: The Dreyfus Affair in Rural France” The American Historical
Review , available via JSTOR
--Zola, “J’accuse!”
Tuesday, November 4
12. The “New Woman” and the Affair
The “New Woman”
Performing Gender
Required Reading
--Roberts, Disruptive Acts,
“The New Woman” and “Acting Up”
**TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11 – VETERAN’S DAY – HOLIDAY**
Tuesday, November 18
13. Severine and Gyp: Performing Gender in the Franco/French War
Severine—feminist journalist, left-wing agitator, and animal-lover
Gyp—“Occupation: Anti-Semite”
Required Reading
--Roberts, “Subversive Copy,” “The New Woman and the Jew,” and
“Caught in the Act”
**NOVEMBER 24-28 – THANKSGIVING BREAK—NO CLASSES**
7

Tuesday, December 2
14. Was the 19 th Century the Century of Sarah Bernhardt?
The Woman and the Jew
Art and Life
Dissolving Boundaries
Required Reading
--Roberts, “The Fantastic Sarah Bernhardt,” and “ Cabotins to the Core”
--Seigel, “Art and Life in Montmarte,” and “Dissolving the Boundaries”
--The music of Eric Satie
Tuesday, December 9
15. The Fair and the Affair: Parisian Imaginations in the Exposition of 1900
Parisian Fairs and Global Commerce
Parisian Fairs and Imperialism
Representation of France and Others in World’s Fairs
The Fairs as Spectacles
Required Reading
--Selections from my personal collections translated for student use
--“Sociology at the Fair
”
--“
Anthropology at the Fair”
--Gyp, Bob à l’exposition (illustrated book available via Google Books)
**Tuesday, December 16**
16. **FINAL PAPER on Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Fin-de-siècle France DUE at time of regularly scheduled final examination**
8

COURSE POLICIES
 Academic dishonesty: "Following procedures of due process established pursuant to Section 41304 of Title 5 of the California Code of Regulations, any student of a campus may be expelled, suspended, placed on probation or given a lesser sanction for one or more of the following causes which must be campus related: a. Cheating or plagiarism in connection with an academic program at a campus; (...) "Academic dishonesty includes such things as cheating, inventing false information or citations, plagiarism and helping someone else commit an act of academic dishonesty . . . . Plagiarism is defined as the act of taking the work of another and offering it as one's own without giving credit to that source.
When sources are used in a paper, acknowledgment of the original author or source must be made through appropriate reference and, if directly quoted, quotation marks or indentations must be used."
( http://owaportal.fullerton.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.fullerton.ed
 u/handbook/policy/discipline.htm
; accessed 3 February 2004).
Behavior: The following is not acceptable: arriving late for class, leaving class early, eating in class, bringing beepers and phones that "go off" audibly during class meetings. Such "not acceptable" behavior will affect your in-class participation grade.
 Blackboard: Blackboard is a course management system which will be available for this class. Course documents will be placed in respective
Blackboard folders.

E-mail: You are encouraged to e-mail the instructor your questions and comments. However, I will only check my email every other day. If your campus email is not your primary account you should make sure that your campus email
“points” to your main account—e.g. hotmail, yahoo, etc. If you do not do this you
 will miss important messages.
 Exams: Under most circumstances, there will be no make-up examinations.
Special needs: If you have a special need that you would like for the instructor to accommodate it is your obligation to contact Disabled Student Services as soon as possible (UH-101; Phone: (714) 278-3117; E-mail: mailto:dsservices@fullerton.edu
) and obtain written verification of this special need and then present this verification to the instructor.
 Submitting assignments: Unless otherwise specified in class (and in writing), all assignments are to be submitted as hard copies, i.e. on paper, and not via email.
 Syllabus Caveat: "Faculty shall not be bound to adhere to their course outlines on a strict day-today basis, but should follow their outlines as much as is reasonably possible. After distribution of course outlines to students, major assignment or course requirement changes (e.g. additional term papers or examinations) must be announced to students with reasonable timetable for completion." (UPS 300.004)
 Technical problems: If you have technical problems (e.g. with the login to
Blackboard or with accessing the CSUF campus computer resources, including the CSUF library computers), call (714) 278-7777. Please note that this hotline is not available 24/7.
9