In the aftermath of the Second World War, Paris became the place where artists and writers from all over the world came to share ideas, innovate, and create new forms of art, and simply enjoy life and peace after years of suffering. Most of the artistic movements that arose during what is now known as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties in the United States (“les années folles” in French) were a reaction to the forms and ways of thinking that had led—according to their detractors—directly to the war and its horrors. Therefore art and literature, pushed by the development of neurosciences and physics and the new visions of the world that they implied, sought new ways of expression. Additionally, the emergence of jazz, recently imported from the United States through American troops, contributed to the general frenzy and feeling of insouciance that permeated the French society at the time.
It is the story of these people and the changes they brought forth that this class will tell, through an survey and anlysis of works of literature, paintings, architecture, newspaper articles, and short films, among other things. Throughout the class, students will also be led to reflect on the reasons that made Paris, of all European cities, the center of such revolutions as well as the chosen place for many disillusioned young people such as the writers of the Lost Generation.
- Teaching coordinator: Schaffner Isabelle