Mornings:

Most mornings we will discuss the readings, and I will present background lectures in preparation for the afternoon's activities. Students will also make group presentations based on their explorations in city's museums and historical sites.

Emperor Napoleon III

Students at the Studio of 19th century Painter Gustave Moreau

Afternoons:

In the afternoons there will normally be a field trip to a museum or historic location in the city. Often there will be team projects involved with particular sites. Groups of students will compete in a scaverger hunt to find a list of 50 images in the galleries of the Musée d’Orsay, the great museum of 19th century art, and they will try to find the sites of ten Impressionist paintings to observe how the city has or has not changed since the 1870s and 1880s. We will visit the Musée Carnavalet, which has a wonderful collection of materials on the history of Paris and the homes/studios of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and the mystical painter Gustave Moreau. And we will walk the boulevards of the city and tour the Paris Opera to experience the grandeur of French life in the Second Empire and Third Republic.

Evenings and Weekends:

There will be readings and other work outside of class, but students will also have an opportunity to explore Paris on their own during the evenings, weekends and some afternoons.