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BASC0085 City of Light and Shadow: BACAH Paris Summer School

This module will take place between Monday 16 June and Sunday 11 July 2025, with teaching for the first two weeks taking place at the Sciences Po campus in Paris. 

The BACAH Summer School will give students an opportunity to acquire intimate familiarity with the rich past and vibrant cultural present of one of Europe’s most exciting cities. BACAH summer schools in other locations will be explored and offered to students in future years, subject to continuing financial support. 

The module will draw on wide-ranging forms of experiential learning and teaching. Small-group seminars and site-specific activities will foreground the of disciplinary perspectives of literary, visual and cultural studies, but will also draw from the research methodologies of visual anthropology, film studies, performance studies, literary studies, political theory, museum studies, art history and the performing arts.

The Paris summer school will enable students to immerse themselves in Paris as a past and present centre for writing, performance and moving image and the site of vibrant creative and cultural industries. Drawing on writings by historians, cultural theorists, artists, philosophers, writers, and journalists, whose creative and critical work has been shaped by their experience of Paris, the course will help students 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. 

Coursework will be supplemented by city walks, guided visits to museums, galleries, and various cultural institutions. Students will be asked to produce visual, audio and written diaries and will draw on them, as well as on their experiences, observations, class discussions, and theoretical/historical readings, for the final project - a multimedia critical-creative work that documents their engagement with the city./p p/Indicative field trips include, but are not limited to: Théâtre de la Colline, the Musée and the Bibliothèque de la Cinémathèque Francaise, the Bibliothèque nationale, the Palais de Tokyo, etc.

Teaching delivery

The Paris Summer School takes place after the end of Term 3 and is made up of two parts. The first 2 weeks consist of intensive seminars and site-specific learning activities, i.e. guided tours, screenings, museum and library visits. The last 2 weeks consist of self-guided independent study in the city. Students will be supported in the second half of their placement remotely by synchronous online sessions (approximately 5 hours).

Indicative topics

Through structured observation and self-reflection, students will grasp the idea of the city as a palimpsest, and explore a range of theoretical concepts in cultural memory, urban topography and social geography, including but not limited to: the psychogeography of Paris; Paris as a spectacle; the politics of street art; Paris and the Lost Generation; the French avant-garde; Paris and the French New Wave; migrant and diasporic cinema; the boulevards and arcades of Paris; Paris, capital of the 19th century and the birth of the flâneur; the flâneur in relation to the migrant, the expat, and the digital nomad, etc

Module aim:

The aim of this module is to provide students with the opportunity to explore in depth a topic relating to one or more of the three core BACAH areas (moving image, writing, performance). In the process, the module will develop students’ independent research skills.  The core focus of the module is methodological: using the city as a framework and field site for critical humanities thinking and practice across disciplines.

Recommended readings:

  1. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Harvard UP, 2002)

  2. Rupert Christiansen, City of Light: The Reinvention of Paris (Apollo, 2018)

  3. Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, ed. Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

  4. David Burke, Writers in Paris: Literary Lives in the City of Light (Paris Writers Press, 2016)

  5. The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the City's Stages (Theatre: Theory - Practice - Performance), ed. David Bradby and Maria M. Delgado (Manchester UP, 2002)

  6. Jeremy Braddock, Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic: Literature, Modernity and Diaspora (Johns Hopkins UP, 2013)

Additional costs:

Students taking this module are required to fund the following. The projected costs for the module are tentative and subject to change:

  • EUR 980 (28 days x EUR 35 per day for food)
  • Return travel: minimum EUR 150
  • Accommodation: minimum EUR 80 per day (EUR 2240 for 4 weeks)
  • Navigo monthly pass: EUR 90
  • Visa for non-EU students: EUR 80

Assessment (formative)

  1. Four weekly blog posts or written reflections (max, 250 words) on a text read or site visited in Paris.

Assessment (summative)

  1. 1,500 word essay (50%)
  2. Creative project (audio, moving image, writing, or performance) (50%)