This course will mainly explore the interactions of Americans with French and other Europeans in Paris during the Jazz Age (roughly 1914 to 1940), although students may also consider earlier visitors (e.g., Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson) or later ones (e.g., Maya Angelou, Quincy Jones).

The exploration will be multi-disciplinary, with attention to fields of

• novels and short stories
  
• poetry
  
• theater
  
• journalism,
  
• classical music,
  
• jazz,
  
• popular music,
  
• dance,
  
• architecture,
  
• painting,
  
• photography,
  
• graphic design,

and possibly other fields suggested by students.

Each student will develop an individual list of readings, videos, recordings, and other forms, and each student will write and present in class three five-page reports covering three different fields. In special cases, students may ask to write two related reports relevant to one field.

Some Americans in Paris include

Cole Porter George Gershwin Archibald MacLeish E. E. Cummings Gerald Murphy F. Scott Fitzgerald Zelda Fitzgerald Gertrude Stein John Dos Passos Sylvia Beach William H. Johnson Robert Benchley Hale Woodruff Dorothy Parker Philip Barry Ernest Hemingway and many others

Josephine Baker

Special attention may be paid to African-Americans in Paris, such as

Sydney Bechet

Josephine Baker Sidney Bechet Louis Armstrong Coleman Hawkins Henry Ossawa Tanner Bricktop [Ada Smith] Langston Hughes Carter G. Woodson Anna Julia Cooper

Students with appropriate backgrounds will be encouraged to explore the impact of early 20th-century technology (e.g., radio, theater lighting, various types of engineering) on the various arts and humanities that rose or flourished in the Jazz Age.

Students will seek at least provisional answers to three main questions.

First (and briefly), why did the Americans leave America? Answers might include both political and social issues (e.g., the Sacco and Vanzetti controversy, Leopold and Loeb, the Scopes “Monkey” trial, sexual mores and preferences, and racism).

Second (and most extensively), what did the Americans find in France? Answers would certainly include the remarkable new artistic and cultural values espoused by and captured in French and other European works in a variety of fields—fields represented by people such as

• Pablo Picasso
• Fernand Leger
• Coco Chanel
• Erik Satie
• George Balanchine
• Arthur Honegger
• Darius Milhaud
• Francis Poulenc
• Sergei Diaghilev
• Igor Stravinsky
• Misia Sert
• Natalia Goncharova
• Jean Cocteau
• Gabriel Faure
• Le Corbusiere

Third, how did Jazz-Age France affect the Americans? What impact did the experience have on their lives and art?

Assignments. Besides completing their individual readings lists (developed with the instructor), students will

1. keep a daily journal to serve as a basis for discussion in class meetings
2. write three short papers (5-6 pages) about a significant work or body of works (e.g., a novel, a symphony, a set of poems, a set of popular songs, a building design) or an aspect of “modernism”
3. present oral reports about their papers

Students will also become familiar with historical and existing Parisian locales relevant to their fields of study. Such sites might include

• The Louvre
  
• The Sorbonne
  
• The Théâtre des Champs Elysées
  
• The Présence Africaine bookstore
  
• The Anglophone Village Voice bookstore
  
• The Olympia Music Hall
  
• TheAmphithéâtre Richelieu
  
• The Images d’Ailleurs (movie theater)
• Hayne’s Soul Food and Live Music
  
• The Caveau des Oubliettes (jazz club)
  
• Specialized museums