Paris Summer School

This is a showcase of final student projects from the Creative Arts and Humanities module BASC0085, Paris: City of Light and Shadow, taught on location in Paris. In 2025 the module ran from June 16 to July 13, 2025 and was led by Prof. Temenuga Trifonova and Dr. Matthew Sterling.

The Creative Arts and Humanities BA is a multi- and inter-disciplinary course that integrates diverse modes of creative practice and critical inquiry—including moving image, writing, and performance—which are studied both independently and in dialogue with one another. Programme website.

The Paris Summer School allows students to immerse themselves in Paris as a hub of vibrant creative and cultural industries. Drawing on writings by cultural theorists, artists, philosophers, writers and journalists, whose creative and critical work was shaped by their experience of Paris, the Paris summer school encourages students to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of the local, regional, national and global forces that have shaped Paris, with particular attention to the ways in which dominant narratives about Paris are produced, reproduced, and contested. 

Through structured observation and self-reflection, students explore a range of theoretical concepts in cultural memory, urban topography and social geography, including but not limited to: the psychogeography of Paris; the French New Wave; Maghrebi-French cinema; Paris as a spectacle; the politics of street art; Paris and the Lost Generation; the French avant-garde; cinema of the banlieue; the boulevards and arcades of Paris; Oulipo and the writing of everyday life; the figure of the flâneur and the expat in French literature, cinema and performance culture, etc.

Coursework is supplemented by city walks, guided visits to museums, galleries, and various cultural institutions. In Summer 2025 students visited the Musée Méliès at the Cinémathèque Française, the Banlieue exhibition at the Musée nationale de l’histoire de l’immigration, Maison de Balzac, the Agnès Varda exhibition at the Musée Carnavalet, and the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé. They joined literary walking tours and explored diverse neighbourhoods, reflecting on how different spaces shape artistic expression.

For their final projects students were asked to draw on their experiences, observations, class discussions and theoretical readings to produce a creative-critical work (in any medium) that documents their engagement with the city.