Parisian World Fairs:1855-1900

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Nineteenth-century Paris was the site of five World’s Fairs (1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, 1900) which brought products, technological innovations, arts, architecture, culture and, most of all, people from around the world to the capital city. They also spurred the construction of many of Paris’s most famous monuments: the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Palais, and what is now the Musée d’Orsay, among others. In this course, we will focus our study of modernity, nationalism, politics and culture through the lens of each of these five Parisian expositions universelles. We will examine the political movements and regime changes that spanned the forty-five years of the expositions and pay careful attention to the project of colonialism contemporary to and on display at the expositions. We will also explore the artists and musicians depicting and inspired by these events, art criticism devoted to the works on display during the expositions, advertisements for the events, and journalistic articles reporting on them. Finally, we will study the reactions of prominent literary and cultural figures to the expositions, both in essays and manifestos, as well as guidebooks.