UN-LEARNING PARIS: SITES OF REBELLION & SITES OF EMPIRE

Credit Hours: 6 · Undergraduate Upper-Level

Borrowing the term “unlearning” from the title of Swati Chattopadhyay 2012 book “Unlearning The City: Infrastructure in a New Optical Field,” which has inspired recent publications and workshops in the fields of art history, architecture, and radical pedagogies, this intensive program deconstructs the city of Paris as a site of contentious memories. The city is to be read as a composite environment built upon the control of land, resources, and bodies enacting a struggle over what is to be remembered and honored, and what is to be erased and forgotten. The course provides a rigorous immersion in the city of Paris while revealing its transnational and multicultural nature. "Unlearning Paris" was conceived and taught as a pilot course for the opening of Rice Global Paris Center during the summer of 2023. Instructor Permission Required.