In -Depth: Speed

3 units

This course explores how French literature and the arts have imagined, celebrated, and critiqued the rise of modern speed. We track the interplay between new media/technologies (rail, chronophotography, automobile, aviation, radio) and new forms ofrepresentation (free verse, montage, simultaneity). Starting from F. T. Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto (1909), we read artistic responses that range from exaltation to dissent: Zola's The Human Beast; Apollinaire's Calligrammes and Cendrars's Prose of the Trans-Siberian. Visual units explore paintings (Monet; Sonia Delaunay), photographs (Germaine Krull), and early film/theory (Ge1maine Dulac), with a coda on slower temporalities (Francis Ponge, Chantal Akerman). We foreground questions of gender, labor, empire, and ethics: who benefits from "time saved," who bears its costs, and how do forms encode ideology? Assignments develop critical interpretation, research, and oral communication in French. Work includes three papers, weekly Canvas prompts, and a field visit to the Kemper Art Museum. Course conducted entirely in French. (HUM) (LCD); Prereq. "In-Perspective".