CLCS 232T Specters of Paris
Ghosts and spirits have played vital roles in oral, written, and visual narratives throughout history and across cultures, appearing as anything from fragments of the imagination, divine messengers, benign or exacting ancestors, and capricious otherworldly creatures populating particular loci to disturbing figures returned from the dead bent on exacting revenge or revealing hidden crimes, or simply searching for a way to make peace with the past and pass on.
French 19th and 20th century writers and filmmakers frequently depict Paris as a haunted city and craft tales that evoke the supernatural as a special form of remembrance, often attached to an ethical imperative to trouble the status quo, to never neglect the past as society pushes forward, with great speed and determination in the name of progress.
The course offers a hybrid creative writing/cultural studies approach to French theory, film, and literature dealing with the topic of haunting, and the specter. Students will gain knowledge of the history of the city of Paris through the unique lens of the ghost story, spectrality theory, and exploration of both the surreal and uncanny. Creative essay writing and storytelling will bring French theory to life, with a travel in Paris dedicated to exploring the underbelly of the City of Lights: its graveyards, its secret hideaways, its passageways haunted - figuratively - by the shadows of revolution, terror, restoration, lamentations of love and betrayal. (Students who have previously taken CRW 110T may not also earn credit for CLCS 232T)