CLS 03 — Paris in the Jazz Age: Music, Poetry, Painting
Quarter: Summer
Day(s): Mondays
Course Format: Live Online (About Formats)
Duration: 6 weeks
Date(s): Jun 20—Aug 1
Time: 7:00—8:50 pm (PT)
Refund Deadline: Jun 22
Unit: 1
Grade Restriction: No letter grade
Tuition: $360
Instructor(s): Timothy Hampton
Class Recording Available: Yes
Status: Open
Summer
Date(s)
Jun 20—Aug 1
6 weeks
Refund Date
Jun 22
1 Unit
Fees
$360
Grade Restriction
No letter grade
Instructor(s):
Timothy Hampton
Recording
Yes
Open
This course will examine the extraordinary, myriad ways in which French and American artists influenced each other during the 1920s—in music, in literature, in painting. The aftermath of the First World War marks a pivotal time in which Europeans experienced the arrival of American jazz and pop culture. We will study this meeting of French culture and American popular music. Figures such as Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, and, later, Miles Davis, have played important roles in the development of French cultural life. At the same time, many French intellectuals have written about jazz with great insight. We will look closely at Le Tumulte Noir, which overtook 1920s Parisian culture, and the nativist French response to it. We will study both the music produced in Paris during the Jazz Age and the response to jazz by poets, painters, filmmakers, and novelists. Among the topics we’ll consider: the possibility of a "European jazz," the role of the Black American jazz musician in the imagination of France's African colonies, and the role of cinema and recorded sound in the transformation of French culture. Works by such writers as Sartre, Cocteau, Hemingway, and Boris Vian will be studied, along with music by Armstrong, Django Reinhardt, and Coleman Hawkins and artwork by Mondrian, Picasso, and Paul Colin.