{"id":1021,"date":"2019-06-29T19:44:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-29T19:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wcsu.wpengine.com\/honors\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2022-07-11T17:46:20","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T17:46:20","slug":"americans-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/honors\/2019\/06\/29\/americans-in-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHON 398 \u2013 Dr. Donald Gagnon and Dr. Leslie Lindenauer\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tModes of Inquiry: Textual Analysis, Artistic Creation and Analysis, Historical, Social and Cultural Analysis\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>

Course Description:<\/h3>\n
\n\t

Paris has long been a destination for Americans seeking artistic shelter and inspiration as well as a welcoming space for writers and artists across race, gender, and sexualities. As David McCullough states in his work, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris<\/em>, \u201cNot all pioneers went west.\u201d Some voyaged to Europe in search of intellectual capital. In addition to well-recorded visits to Paris by such American founding fathers as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, the first Americans to land in France in the nineteenth century were an eclectic group: medical students, artists, and writers. They were also very talented. Samuel Morse, Charles Sumner, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Fennimore Cooper were among the first wave, but almost all of them were unknown at the time. They went to Paris to \u201cstudy hard\u201d as the painter George Healy stated. Even Cooper, already famous for his novel The Last of the Mohicans<\/em>, shared his cohorts\u2019 emphasis on work; he wrote eight novels during his seven years abroad. The U.S. was better for their efforts; for example, it was alongside black students at the Sorbonne that Sumner first discerned the inconsistencies undergirding America\u2019s racial system. As he recorded in his journal in January 1838, \u201cThe distance between free blacks and whites among us is derived from education, and does not exist in the nature of things.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

It is this \u201cnature of things\u201d on a broader cultural, historical, political, and artistic canvas that we hope to explore in this course. These acts of academic and intellectual inquiry will mirror what George Gershwin hoped to explore in his seminal composition, An American in Paris<\/em>: \"My purpose here is to portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises, and absorbs the French atmosphere.\" Our \u201cimpressions\u201d will focus on the lasting impact of American\/Parisian social and cultural contact, beginning with our early political alliances and morphing through various intentional and unintentional phenomena to a lasting, if sometimes uneasy, relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
  • \"The
    Americans in Paris<\/div><\/div><\/li>
  • \"Students
    Americans in Front of L\u2019\u00e9glise Sainte-Marie des Batignolles<\/div><\/div><\/li>
  • \"Students
    Americans in Disneyland Paris!<\/div><\/div><\/li>
  • \"Students
    Americans Taking Another Group Photo in Paris<\/div><\/div><\/li>
  • \"Students
    Americans Outside of Shakespeare and Company Bookstore<\/div><\/div><\/li>
  • \"A
    Americans at L'Aventure de la couleur<\/div><\/div><\/li>
  • \"Students
    Americans at the Square Louise Michel in Montmartre<\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div>