SUMMER-ABROAD.UCDAVIS.EDU May 12, 2008 02:44 PM
Marc Blanchard, Professeur Agrégé de l’Université (Paris-Sorbonne)
Comparative Literature Department, UC Davis
meblanchard@ucdavis.edu
Marc Blanchard taught at Yale and Columbia before joining the UCD faculty in 1970. He trained as a classics scholar, but his longstanding research interests are in Comparative Literature, History, Philosophy, Politics, and the Critique of Culture. He was co-founder of the Comparative Literature Program in 1971, the founding Director of the Critical Theory Program in 1985 and of the Humanities Program in 1987. His articles and books include, La Revolution et les Mots, Description:: Sign, Self, Desire: Critical Theory in the Wake of Semiotics, In Search of the City and Trois portraits de Montaigne. He has published more than seventy articles in major journals on topics of Theory, European, Latin American, Caribbean and especially Cuban Literature. He has held several visiting professorships (NYU, CCNY, UNC Chapel Hill, Stanford, the Ruhr Universitaet, Bochum, Germany) and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984.
Raquel Scherr, Ph.D.*
University Writing Program, UC Davis
* Recipient of Academic Federation Excellence in Teaching Award
rlscherr@ucdavis.edu
Raquel Scherr holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and currently teaches for the University Writing Program at University of California, Davis. Raquel is a theorist of mixed race issues, ethnic writing and criticism, a member of the Chicana/Latina Research Center at UCD, and an adviser to undergraduate and graduate students across departments on campus. Her publications include: Face Value: The Politics of Beauty and West of The West: Imagining California. She has recently published an essay on mixed race theory, "Miscegnarration" (University of Texas Press, 2004) and a critical essay on the politics of beauty for the leading academic journal in Cuba, Revolucion y Cultura. She has also worked as an editorial consultant on such documentary award winning films such as: "Edward James: Builder of Dreams," and Maureen Gosslings "Blossoms of Fire."
Class Size: 25-27
Link to Americans in Paris Photo Gallery
This program provides a study of the representation of Paris in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and of its role as the capital of modern culture. We will discuss major texts from Jefferson to Baldwin, listen to key musicians (e.g. Sidney Bechet), view major films (e.g. An American in Paris), and learn to read the city and report on its politics from the vantage point of young 21st century Americans. Seminar-style classes held at Reid Hall on the Columbia campus in Paris. Assignments include required readings and independent walks throughout the city. All readings are in English.
