This course focuses on the emergence in mid nineteenth-century Paris of a group of progressive painters who shared a common interest in documenting the experience of everyday life in the modern metropolis. This new interest in the city, its inhabitants, and their characteristic forms of work and leisure represented a major shift in nineteenth-century visual culture - a shift that coincided with industrialization, colonial expansion, and the emergence of consumer capitalism. It also coincided with the wholesale rebuilding of the city, which in turn provided artists with an abundance of new motifs through which the modern urban experience could be explored.

Our objective is to assess the work of figures like Manet, Degas, Caillebotte, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec in relation to their immediate social, political, and cultural contexts. In addition to the modernization of Paris, the second half or the nineteenth century witnessed the proliferation of art criticism and the establishment of alternative exhibition practices, both of which exerted considerable influence on artistic strategies. So too did new understandings of self and subjectivity, generated on the one hand by the nineteenth century's revolutionary upheavals, and on the other by the gradual ascendancy of Republicanism. These are among the historical conditions that led painters to abandon historical subject in favor of an art that sought to capture in concrete form the various encounters of the individual with the modern city.

Textbooks/Other Materials: None. All readings are available on Canvas.

Course Requirements: Attendance in class, weekly responses to course readings, and a long research paper (@ 4500-5000 words). The reader responses count for 20% of the final grade. Class participation counts for 20% of the final grade. The research paper counts for 60% of the final grade.

Intended Audience: Upper-level students interested in French visual culture and history.

Class Format: One three-hour seminar per week.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0-50

HISTART Distribution Requirements: Europe and the US, Modern and Contemporary