History 3966 (2008-2009)
Britain and France 1800-2000

Instructor:  Andrea Geddes Poole			Office Hours: Thursdays 2:30-3:30
Lady Eaton College	Room S119.7 (located in the College offices, behind the photocopier)
Lectures: Tuesday 3:00-5:00 			 Email: ageddespoole@trentu.ca

This course deals with the social and cultural history of France and Great Britain during the profoundly turbulent nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  This course will operate on two levels:  we will study the major events that have shaped French and British history in the past two centuries – revolutions (both political and industrial), the abolition of slavery, franchise-widening legislation, the two world wars, Britain’s embrace of Europe, etc.  But this course will also specifically focus on society and culture, French and British art, literature, the evolution of theatre and its censorship, public health matters, Jewish life in France and Britain (and the crucial the differences between), the lives of French and British women, queer life in Britain and in France, the lives of workers and their exploitation in the two countries. The objective is to gain an understanding of how France has managed to combine social stability with almost constant political turmoil and how Britain has remained wedded to ages-old traditions while also playing a leading part in the creation of the modern world.  

Although there is no exam, this course does require a fair amount of reading.  This course also emphasizes visual culture and students will be expected to use the links on the course web-site to galleries and museums and familiarize themselves with the paintings, photographs, sculpture, building and interior design which will be referred to during seminar discussions and lectures. This course will also use films; some will be shown in the course of the year and will form the main text for discussion (e.g., the abolition of slavery in Amazing Grace) others are recommended that students view at their leisure (e.g., Caché).   Texts will include readings from: Balzac, Mrs. Gaskell, George Orwell, Friedrich Engels, Oscar Wilde and the journals of Victor Hugo.  	

We will also be following the life stories of certain selected persons who will act as our guides to these two centuries; we will pop in and out of their lives as their stories illuminate the changes and continuities that surround them, for example: Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842), artist, member of the Royal Academy and single mother; Victor Hugo (1802-1885), playwright, poet, novelist, political activist, exile and, ultimately, Senator; John Bright (1811-1889), pacifist, radical M.P., campaigner for Indian independence; Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), slum physician, playwright and novelist, barely closeted homosexual; “Red” Ellen Wilkinson (1891-1947), suffragette, trade union official, cabinet minister, suicide; Emilie Carles (1900-1979), country farmer of les Hautes-Alpes and environmentalist; Maurice Papon (1910-2007), civil servant, cabinet minister, collaborator and, finally, convicted war criminal.	

Readings: Students are expected to complete the required reading for each week as these readings will form the substance of tutorial discussions. “Recommended Readings” can point you to further reading, perhaps for essays. At the conclusion of each section of this syllabus pertaining to the readings is a suggested  “Reading Question” which might serve to shape and focus each week’s reading.

Lectures:   Two hours, weekly

Tutorials:  (20%) Weekly, 50 minutes.  The focus of discussion will be the assigned readings.  Students are expected to attend all seminars, to have completed all the readings, and participate actively in the seminar discussion.   Absences will quickly cut deeply into the 20% tutorial component of your final grade.  So, frankly, will silence.  Participation in tutorials is particularly important; everyone is expected to make a contribution. Read that last sentence again. THAT MEANS IF YOU SHOW UP AND SAY NOTHING YOU WILL LIKELY RECEIVE A FAILING GRADE FOR TUTORIAL PARTICIPATION.

Presentations: (20%) Each student will make a presentation on one week’s readings.  The student presenting will be expected to analytically discuss (briefly) what they think is important about the readings.  This should not just be a summary of content, nor should it be a book review of the reading materials.  Try to focus on such issues as: summarizing the most important points in the readings, how a specific primary source is particularly revealing (or not) of society’s views, the author’s main purpose in writing, or a particular method or set of sources that a historian uses.  The student presenting will then lead the discussion by posing questions to their classmates.  DO NOT START YOUR PRESENTATION BY RATTLING OFF YOUR LIST OF QUESTIONS, BUT PROVIDE AN ANAYLSED CONTEXT FOR THE DISCUSSION.  Students will hand in the list of questions they have composed as part of the assignment.  You will be graded on the quality of your opening analysis, how well you lead the discussion and on the quality of the list of questions.  Please feel free to consult me as you organize your presentation. *Note: Students will not be allowed to make up for a missed presentation. 

Essay # 1:  (25%) First Research Essay:  The main objective in this assignment is to pose a question and then build an argument, using primary sources (quotations from letters, memoirs, diaries, newspaper articles, etc.), leading your reader to a conclusion.  The subject of this essay must focus on the period covered in the first half of the course, i.e., the nineteenth century.  Make the title of your essay the question you are pursuing (e.g., “Why did revolution break out in 1848?”). Students must clear their subject with me in writing, well in advance.  I will not accept papers written on a topic that I have not approved.  The use of primary sources cannot be stressed enough.  I want you all to act as historians in sifting and measuring the weight and importance of the primary sources as evidence as you present your case.  Do not quote historians to me – quote the evidence itself.  That does not mean you ignore historians.  You should include, as part of this essay, include both a discussion of the state of debate on your particular question and a weighing and assessing of the positions taken by the main historians who have opined on your chosen topic.  This paper should be approximately 3,200 to 4,000 words in length (about 10-12 pages) and it is due on December 5.

Essay #2 (35%) Second Research Essay:  Deploying your experience gained from the first research project, pose another question and refine your expertise in digging up primary source materials: letters, diaries, memoirs, newspaper articles, letters to the editor, etc.  The topic for this second essay must focus on the period covered in the second half of the course, that is, the twentieth century.  Students must clear their subject with me, in writing, well in advance.  I will not accept papers written on a topic that I have not approved.  As before, the main objective in this assignment is to pose a question and then build an argument, using primary sources (quotations from letters, memoirs, diaries, newspaper articles, etc.), leading your reader to a conclusion.  Again, make the title of your essay the question you are pursuing (e.g., “Why and when did the British Suffragette movement turn violent?”). Also as before, students should include, as part of this essay, a discussion of the state of debate and a weighing and assessing of the chief secondary sources.  This essay should be between 5,000 and 6,500 words (between 15 and 20 pages) and it is due in class on April 2.

Grading:
Tutorial Performance		20%
Presentations			20%
First Essay			25%
Second Essay			35%

* Extensions will only be considered in exceptional circumstances, and will require supporting documentation (e.g. medical notes).  Any extension must be arranged before the due date. The penalty on late papers is three percent per day, including weekends.  This is not negotiable.

Other Business:
Papers must be handed in to me directly or to the History Department.  You assume the risk of loss if you attempt any other method of submission.  I will not accept papers submitted electronically. (Please re-read that last sentence)

Plagiarism: Plagiarism is an extremely serious academic offence and carries penalties varying from failure in an assignment to debarment from the University.  Definitions, procedures, and penalties for dealing with plagiarism are set out in Trent University’s Policy on Academic Misconduct in the University Calendar.

Do not Submit the Same work for Two Classes:  It constitutes an academic offence to submit the same work for credit in two separate courses.  Even though it is your original work, you might unwittingly get yourself into trouble.  See me if you have any doubts when planning your research.  

TEXTS
Jeremy Popkin	History of Modern France, 1789-2000 (3rd ed., 2005)
Norman McCord			British History 1815-1906 (1991)
Peter Clarke				Hope and Glory (2003)
Robert Graves 			Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography (1958)
Irene Nemirovsky	Suite Francaise (2006)
Emile Guillaumin 			Life of a Simple Man (1904)
George Orwell				Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia

All of these books are on sale in the university bookstore and all are on reserve at Bata.  Many can be inexpensively purchased (used) at www.abebooks.com.  Some texts in the public domain (eg., Pere Goriot, Mary Barton) can be found on the web through Project Gutenberg.

HELPFUL LINKS
A variety of helpful links will be posted to the course website, but here is a sampling:
•	An excellent link concerning 19th century French history and culture with numerous links to primary sources collections (e.g, Association George Sand, Association Camille Claudel), may be found at: http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/CStivale/19thC/index.html

•	The Victorian Web is a first-rate website concerning British history, literature, social customs, etc. http://victorianweb.org/

•	This link will take you to the website for the Musée d’Orsay, the best collection of 19th and 20th century French art. http://www.musee-orsay.fr/

•	Here is a link to the Tate Gallery collections, the premier collection of British art.

•	Here is a first-rate link out of the University of Kentucky (Jeremy Popkin) on French workers of the nineteenth century http://www.uky.edu/~popkin/frenchworker.htm

•	For a very large collection of photographic images of Queen Victoria and her family members, click here. And for even more fun, here is a link to The Victorian Dictionary, which has links to all aspects of British life during the Victorian era.
•	A very good link concerning Victorian literature: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/%7Ejlynch/Lit/victoria.html 

LECTURE AND TUTORIAL SCHEDULE

Sept. 9  Introduction and The Malestrom Before
Required Reading: Popkin, Pp.36-69.  Go to the course  website and follow the link to read excerpts from the  Memoirs of Marie Antoinette’s portraitist, Elizabeth Vigée le Brun (1755-1842). 

Visual Texts: Go to the websites of the Tate Gallery (London) and the Louvre (Paris) (linked to course website) and review the paintings of  Elizabeth Vigée le Brun, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Fragonard, Reynolds and Gainsborough. Make note of the works’ dates. Make note of the painters’ gender.

Recommended Reading: Hobsbawm, Eric, Echoes of the Marseillaise: two centuries look back on the French Revolution (1990); JT. Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars; Robert and Isabelle Tombs, That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the present (2007)
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

September 16 – English Jacobins & The Napoleonic Empire
Required Reading:  Popkin, Pp.70-82; browse generally through E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, (on reserve at Bata)..

Visual Texts: Follow the links on the course website and review the paintings of Jacques Louis David, Thomas Lawrence and John Crome.

Recommended Reading: Repression,'Terror'and the Rule of Law in England during the Decade of the French Revolution, C Emsley - The English Historical Review, Vol. 100, No. 397 (Oct., 1985), pp. 801-825. L. Colley, Britons (1992).

Reading Question: How did British and French views of the French Revolution and Napoleon differ and vary?
_____________________________________________________________________________
September 23 – Film “Amazing Grace”
Required Reading:  Popkin, Pp. 62, 75-76; Adam Hochschild, “Against all odds: the first great human-rights campaign--the movement to end slavery in the British Empire”, Mother Jones, vol.29, no.1, pp.66, (2004); start reading Père Goriot available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1237.

Visual Texts: Turner’s  Slavers Throwing the Dead and Dying Overboard with a Typhoon Coming On .

Recommended Reading: “British Way, French Way: Opinion Building and Revolution in the Second French Slave Emancipation”, Seymour Drescher, The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 3. (Jun., 1991), pp. 709-734. Browse through An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies; for promoting the Industry of the manumitted Slaves; and for compensating the Persons hitherto entitled to the Services of such Slaves. (28 August 1833); Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (2005); Lawrence C. Jennings, French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France 1802-1848 (2000); Franco-British Conference on slavery, Social History, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 311-14, October 1999.

Reading Question: How and why did British and French attitudes towards slavery differ? _____________________________________________________________________________________________
September 30 – Restoration, Revolution
Required Reading: Continue reading Père Goriot; Popkin, Pp. 83-92; McCord, Pp. 13-26, 32-34, 41-43, 62-66, 127-138; Click on course website, follow the link to the “Peel Web” and read the description of the Bristol Riots and the speech of Macaulay. Follow the “Victor Hugo” link to read the indicated extracts from Victor Hugo’s Journal 1830-1848. 
Visual Texts: Follow the links on the course website and review the paintings of Jacques Louis David’s student, Ingres.  Go to the course website and click on the “Penny Magazine” link for a weekly magazine (1832-35) aimed at the British working class. 

Recommended Reading: “The 1832 Reform Act Debate: Should the Suffrage Be Based on Property or Taxpaying?” Nancy LoPatin-Lummis, Journal of British Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, P. 320.  

Reading Question: The French Revolution of 1830 and the Great Reform Act of 1832; genuine change or old wine in new bottles?
______________________________________________________________________________
October 7 – Industrial Growth, Capital Growth, Imperial Growth, Artistic Growth
Required Reading: Finish reading Père Goriot; McCord, P. 56-58, 71-88, 91-94, 103-110, 204-209; Popkin, Pp. 93-114; Start reading Mary Barton, either in hard copy or available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2153

Visual Texts: Follow the links on the course website and review the paintings of: Millet, Courbet, Abraham Solomon; Constable, Joseph Wright of Derby; click on the following direct links: Constable, The Haywain (1821); Turner, The Fighting Temeraire (1839) and Rain, Steam and Speed (The Great Western Railroad) (1845).

Recommended Reading: The poems of Byron and Shelley, Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (1999); The Age of Capital (1988); Kenneth Morgan, The Birth of Industrial Britain: social change 1750-1850 (2004); Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.

Reading Question: During this period were there significant differences in sources of wealth and class mobility between France and Britain?  When you compare your readings and the historians from your textbooks to Père Goriot do we see the novel as being actually revealing as a source or is it just a catchy, sentimental story? 
__________________________________________________________________
October 14 – The Revolution and the Charter 
Required Reading: Popkin, P.115-124 and McCord, P. 146-153, 165-171; conclude Mary Barton; Browse through the pamphlets and periodicals of the 1848 Revolution in Paris found at this link (they are very cool): http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/ARTFL/projects/CRL/
and contemporary commentators (eg., Alexis de Toqueville) (en francais) at: http://hypo.ge-dip.etat-ge.ch/www/cliotexte/html/deuxieme.republique.html.

Visual Texts: Follow the links on the course website and review the paintings by Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Géricault. Browse through the lithographs of Honoré Daumier found in their entirety at: http://lts.brandeis.edu/research/archives-speccoll/daumier/world/.  Check out the timelime.  

Recommended Reading: Georges Duveau, 1848:The Making of a Revolution; Stacey Renee, “Novels, Myth, and the Image of the 1851 Anti-Coup Insurgents”, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History Vol. 33, 2005; Spectacular Politics: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and the Fête Impériale, 1849-1870, Matthew Truesdell (1997) (available as an e-book). Click the George Sand and Flora Tristan link on course website for a discussion between three French historians (out of Mount Holyoke College’s conference) of George Sand’s and Flora Tristan’s views of women’s rights in mid-nineteenth century France. Click on course website for: The Marriage Market; Women of England (1839); James Greenwood on Prostitution; Dr.Acton on Prostitution, Doc. 1 .

Reading Question: Why does the Revolution of 1848 succeed in Paris but the Chartists do not attain their objectives in Great Britain?  What are the Chartists objectives?  How is the French Revolution of 1848 so easily deformed?
______________________________________________________________________________

October 20-24 READING WEEK 

______________________________________________________________________________
October 28 –  What do we mean by “Good Government”? 
Required Reading: McCord, P. 176-178;  Popkin, Pp. 125-138; Michael Faraday: Observations on the Filth of the Thames, contained in a letter addressed to the Editor of The Times, 1855.  
Visual Texts: Go to the links on the course website and follow them to the London engravings of Gustave Doré at this fine University of Cardiff website: http://www.cf.ac.uk/encap/skilton/illustr/index.html
Follow the links of the course website and review the following paintings: Holman Hunt’s Awakening Conscience (1853) and Light of the World (1851-3);  John Everett Millais’ Isabella; Abraham Solomon’s, First Class, the Meeting, (revised version, 1855); original version.  

Recommended Reading: David P. Jordan, “Haussmann and Haussmannisation: The Legacy for Paris.” French Historical Studies 2004 27 (1): 87-113; Edwin Chadwick (1803-1890): Report on Sanitary Conditions, 1842; Luckin, Bill. “The Heart and Home of Horror: The Great London Fogs of the Late Nineteenth Century.”Social History 2003 28(1): 31-48; . S. Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain (London, 1983); Richard S. Hopkins, From place to espace: Napoleon III's transformation of the Bois de Boulogne, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, Volume 31 (2003).

Reading Question: Is there a moral element in the quest for cleanliness in Britain and France? Or is this all about control?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
November 4 – Social Issues, French and British
Required Reading: McCord Pp. 178-180, 190-200, 210-227; Emile Guillaumin, Life of a Simple Man 1873-1951 (1904); Follow the links on the course website and read the following short extracts: Testimony before Lord Ashley’s Commission; Life of 19th Century Workers In England; Observations on the Loss of Woollen Spinning, Women Miners in the English Coal Pits,  Friedrich Engels: Industrial Manchester, 1844; Friedrich Engels: from The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 ;  For the complete text of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, click here. 

Visual Texts: Follow the links on the course website and examine the following paintings: Luke Fildes, Applicants for Admission to the Casual Ward; William Powell Frith, Poverty and Wealth; Hubert Von Herkomer, On Strike ;  Hard Times; Frederick Walker, The Vagrants. Browse through these Victorian photographs: http://www.btinternet.com/%7Esbishop100/  

Recommended Reading: Review “Unmasking the Bourgeoisie” on the Victor Hugo website http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/; Gene Barberet, “Emile Guillaumin” The French Review, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jan., 1953), pp. 195-200;  Jules and Edmond Goncourt, Pages from the Goncourt Journal (1988); Samuel Smiles, Self Help; Frederic Lindley Morgan, Gustave Dore's London: A Study of the City in the Age of Confidence, 1848-1873; George Eliot, Middlemarch; Thomas Carlyle: Past and Present; Another Carlyle web portal is here.  For the complete text of Past and Present, click here. ); review of Carlyle's Past and Present And here are some critical comments on Past and Present. 

Reading Question: Do the French and the British view social obligations in the same way?

November 11 – The March of the Women, The March of Science 
Required Reading:  Popkin, 138, 161; McCord, Pp. 338, 339, 355; On-line, for both March of Women and March of Science, go to the course website and read the excerpts from The Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill that are posted there. Next, follow the Charles Darwin link http://www.victorianweb.org/science/darwin/darwinov.html to the “Victorian Web”.  Feel free to browse here generally, but be sure to read “Introduction: Charles Darwin (1809-1882) gentleman naturalist”.
Visual texts: Click on the link on course website and review the paintings of: Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Gustave Courbet
Recommended Reading: Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur (2000) on reserve at Bata; For the full text of The Subjection of Women, follow the John Stuart Mill link on the course website. For an excellent entrée into the works of Darwin click on this site managed by Cambridge University: http://darwin-online.org.uk/ ;  Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire and Marriage in Victorian England (2007); Walkowitz, Judith R. “Going Public: Shopping, Street Harassment, and Streetwalking in Late Victorian London.” Representations 1998 (62): 1-30; Click on course website for: Charles Sowerwine, “Sexual Contract(s) of the Third Republic”; Jan Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750-1850 (2005) Click here for a discussion of Goldstein’s book: http://www.h-france.net/forum/h-franceforum.html

Reading Question: Was the idea of Darwinian evolution actually much of a bombshell?  The work of Pasteur?  Were the French and English notions of a woman’s place in society very different? 

November 18 – La Commune, The Third Republic, L’Affaire Dreyfus…and Gladstone  
Required Reading: Popkin, Pp.139-186; McCord 265-268, 374-376. Follow the link of the course website to “The Victorian Web” and browse generally through “Judiasim in Victorian England” found under “Religion” at this link: http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/jewsov.html

Visual Texts: Examine Northwestern University Library - Special Collections : The Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871 : 1500 caricatures, 68 newspapers, hundreds of books and pamphlets, and about 1000 posters. A search engine on the site allows phrase searches. Click on the course website) and examine Edouard Manet’s portrait of Emile Zola.  Then review the paintings of: Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and James McNeil Whistler. Contrast and compare the sculptures of Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin. Examine John Everett Millais’ portrait of Gladstone, other images of Gladstone: The Grand Old Man Chopping Wood  (1877); commemorative print of Gladstone's career; 3/4 view.  Other portraits used by way of contrast and comparison: Matthew Arnold. Millais's portraits of  Disraeli.
Recommended Reading: Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy (1979) pp. 33-45 (on reserve); Click on website to read text of J’Accuse by Emile Zola; Charles Sowerwine, The Sexual Contract(s) of the Third Republic (posted to course website); George R. Whyte, The Dreyfus Affair: A Chronological History (2005); Charles Sowerwine, France Since 1870: Culture, Politics, Society, chapter 1, 2, 3; Emile Zola, Ladies' Paradise;    

Recommended Films: Topsy-Turvy, Emile Zola, Camille Claudel

Reading Question: Identify any differences between everyday life in fin de siècle in Paris and London.  Does your answer change if you are considering everyday Jewish life? What if you are a woman?
_____________________________________________________________________________
November 25 – Film “Oscar” (Brian Gilbert, 1989)

No Required Reading, no seminars, work on mid-term essay
 
Visual Texts: Follow link on course website and review the paintings/drawings of: Puvis de Chavannes, Toulouse Lautrec and Aubrey Beardsley.

Recommended Reading: Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic; Edward Carpenter, The Intermediate Sex, Wilson, Michael L. “Swishing on the Boulevards exterieures: Representations of Male Same-Sex Desire in Fin-de-siècle Popular Culture.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History 1998 26: 112-121 (available through link on course website);  Morris Kaplan, Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times (2005); Cocks, H. G., Nameless offences : homosexual desire in the nineteenth century (2003);  Brady, Sean,  Masculinity and male homosexuality in Britain, 1861-1913 (2005).
 
Reading Question: Queer life in fin de siècle London and Paris: contrast and compare.
_________________________________________________________________
December 2 – no lecture, no seminars, mid-term essay due

Happy Holidays!

______________________________________________________________________________
January 6 - The Emergence of the Modern
Required Reading: Popkin, Pp.186-199; Clarke, Hope and Glory, Pp. 40-62; Jack London, People of the Abyss (browse generally; available on line through Project Gutenberg and on reserve at Bata); Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (1914) Pp. 81-165 (on reserve); Eugen Weber, The Nationalist Revival in France 1905-1914 (1968) pp. 44-51 (on reserve).

Visual Texts: Follow the links on the course website and examine the pre 1914 paintings of: Walter Sickert, Vanessa Bell, Philip Wilson Steer and Henry Tonks,  Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin Henri Matisse, André Derain, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Georges Rouault.

Recommended reading: Guy de Maupassant, “A Parisian Affair” and “Laid to Rest.”
Howards End, Ann Veronica.

Discussion Theme: Is the idea of the “long nineteenth century” stretching from 1789 to 1918, a powerful myth?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
January 13 – World War One
Required Reading: Popkin, Pp 200-219; Robert Graves’ Good-Bye to All That, 
Recommended Reading: Henri Barbusse, Le Feu, (on reserve at Bata) Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (1979); Modris Eksteins' Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1989); Frank Field, Three French Writers and the Great War: Studies in the Rise of Communism and Fascism (1975); Frank Field, British and French Writers of the First World War: Comparative Studies in Cultural History (1991); Nicoletta Gullace, "White Feathers and Wounded Men: Female Patriotism and the Memory of the Great War" Journal of British Studies, 36 (April 1997): 178-206. Seth Koven, Remembering and Dismemberment: Crippled Children, Wounded Soldiers and the Great War in Great Britain" American Historical Review (Oct. 1994): 1167-1199.
Visual texts: Click on the WWI link on the course website for photographs of the conflict 1914-1918.

Discussion Theme: Did France and Britain experience the First World War in the same ways?
_________________________________________________________________
January 20 – Social and Financial Crisis
Required Reading: Clarke, Pp. 128-143, 151-159; Popkin, Pp. 220-246 ; George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London http://www.george-orwell.org/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London/index.html; 

Recommended Reading:  Janet Flanner, Paris Was Yesterday 1925-1939 (1988); Charles Sowerwine, France Since 1870: Culture, Politics and Society (2001); Follow link on course website to find the H-France forum on Robert O. Paxton’s French Peasant Fascism: http://www.h-france.net/reviews/paxtonforum.html where four eminent French historians take issue with Paxton’s position.  Be sure to also read Paxton’s response. Henry Dorgeres, Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929-1939, Margaret Morris, The General Strike (1976); Susan Kingsley Kent, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Inter-War Britain (1994), ch.3, 51-73.

Visual Texts: Click on the course website and review the paintings of Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, Pablo Picasso, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Francis Pacabia, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Braque

Discussion Theme: Did Britain and France experience the depression in the same ways? For the same reasons?
________________________________________________________________
January 27— Film: “Love on the Dole” 
Recommended Reading: George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/index.html

__________________________________________________________________
February 3 -  “We came because our open eyes could see no other way” France and Britain and the Spanish Civil War
Required Reading: Popkin, Pp. 246-247; Clarke, Pp 166-181; George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/index.html

Recommended Reading: M.D. Gallagher, “Leon Blum and the Spanish Civil War”, Journal of Contemporary History vol. 6 (1971) 56-64; Remi Skoutelsky, ‘”Espoir guidait leur pas: les volontaires francais dans les Brigades Internationales 1936-1939 (1998); Bill Alexander, British Volunteers for Liberty Spain 1936-1939 (1982); Jason Gurney, Crusade in Spain (1974).

Visual Texts: Picasso’s Guernica; Click on this website from exhibition of Spanish Civil war posters and review: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/

Discussion Theme: Was there a connection between conditions in Britain and France and volunteering to fight in the Spanish Civil War? 
_____________________________________________________________________________
February 10 –- World War Two
Required Reading:  Clarke, P.190-215; Popkin, Pp.248-271; Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise (2005); Follow link on course website for the collected people’s memories of the Battle of Britain: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/44/a3339344.shtml.  Browse this site further for stories of childhood evacuation, the Blitz and the British homefront experience.  

Recommended Reading: Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat (on reserve at Bata); Sybille Bedford, Quicksands: A Memoir (2006); Richard Vinen, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (2007);  Click on this link for the text of the Franco-German Armistice, 1940 http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/wwii/frgearm.htm. Click on the link to H-France on the course website and read the forum discussion concerning Robert J. Young’s France and the Origins of the Second World War. Follow the link on the course website for the primary document collections at the Imperial War Museum http://collections.iwm.org.uk/server.php?show=nav.00g002
Discussion Theme: In what ways did British and French experiences of the Second World War differ?
READING WEEK  February 16-20

__________________________________________________________________

February 24 – Film: The Sorrow and the Pity

______________________________________________________________________________

March 3 – Recovery?
Required Reading: Popkin, Pp. 272-284; Clarke, Pp. 216-233;  Peruse the following founding texts of social democratic Britain: the Beveridge Report of 1942 at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1942beveridge.html and the Labour Party election manifesto for 1945 at http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/man/lab45.htm.

Recommended Reading: Rebecca Pulju, Changing Homes, Changing Lives: Material Conditions, Women's Demands, and Consumer Society in Post-World War II France, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 2003;  Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (2005); D. Cogan, De Gaulle: A Biography with Documents, Janet Flanner, Paris Journal 1944-1955 (1988); Plenty by David Hare; Look Back in Anger by John Osborne.

Visual Texts: Follow link on course website to paintings for this week.  Click on the course website for the Museum of London Festival of Britain (1951) website: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archive/exhibits/festival/index.htm

Discussion Theme: Did France and Britain recover from World War II in the same manner and at the same time?
__________________________________________________________________
March 10 – Retreat from Colonialism and Reverse Immigration
Required Reading:  Clarke, Pp. 319-329, Popkin, Pp. 285-292; Read the oral histories of those arriving in Britain from the Caribbean on the SS Empire Windrush: http://www.bbc.education.co.uk/windrush. Follow link on course website to an article by Lee Whitfield, “Algeria in France: French Citizens, the War, and Right-wing Populism in the Reckoning of the Republic in Languedoc, 1954-1962” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 2005, vol. 33.
Recommended Reading: White Teeth by Zadie Smith; J. Talbott, The War without a name: France in Algeria 1954-1962 (1980); Click here for Chris Waters, “Dark Strangers” in Our Midst: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, 1947-1963,” Journal of British Studies Vol. 36, No. 2 (April 1997), pp. 207-238; Hanif Kureishi, My Son the Fanatic . There is a good discussion of Kureishi's importance to British-Asians in the London Review of Books. 
Reading Question: What are the similarities and differences between the French and British experiences of the contraction of empire? And why?

_____________________________________________________________________________ 
March 17 – 1968 and all that 
Required Reading: Popkin, Pp. 293-312, Clarke, Pp. 283-293 & 302-318; Follow link on course website to: http://www.marxists.org/history/france/may-1968/index.htm
Click on course website also for: Michael Sibalis, “Gay Liberation Comes to France” Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the George Rudé Society (link at course website). 

Recommended Reading: Frederic Martel, The Pink and the Black:Homosexuals in France Since 1968(1999); David Caute, Sixty-Eight: The Year of the Barricades (1988); Robert Daniels, The Year of the Heroic Guerrilla: World Revolution in 1968 (1989); Ignazio Silone, Emergency Exit (1968); Edgar Morin, The Red and the White:Report from a French Village (1970); seriously recommended film: Jonah Who will be 21 in the year 2000.
________________________________
March 24 – Monsieur Mitterand and Mrs. Thatcher 
Required Reading: Clarke, Pp. 358-400; Popkin, Pp. 313-320 
Recommended Reading: George Ross, et al., The Mitterand Experiment (1987); Mazey and Nenman, Mitterand’s France (1987); Joe Kerr, London from punk to Blair (2003);  Earl A. Reiton, The Thatcher Revolution: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and the Transformation of Modern Britain 1979-2001 (2002). 

____________________________________________________________________________
March 31  –– Finally, a unified Europe?
Required Reading: Clarke, Pp. 404-409

Recommended Reading: Derek Unwin, The Community of Europe 2nd ed. (1995); John Pinder, The European Community, The Building of a Union (1991); Dean Kotlowski, The European Union, From Jean Monnet to the Euro (2000). 

** APRIL 3  Research Essay Due **