French 1000A
Unlocking France
Offered in English
Prerequisites: none
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Land of wine and good food for some; a perfect place to go camping and bicycling for others; the longest ski-resort network awaits your next winter amusements if you like snowboarding or the most traditional forms of cross-country ski; the land of museums or the place to go sailing, this course takes you out of Paris to design your own tour de France. The older generations hoped from one city to the next, vaguely peering from the SNCF (train) window and visiting landmarks with a selfie to show they were “there”, and they ate a croissant after standing in line at the Eiffel Tower, before eating a pretzel and drinking a beer in Berlin in front of a pub that looked very much like the one in their hometown—you may eat a pretzel and drink a beer in front of the Strasbourg cathedral in France. But newer generations find new ways to reach common landmarks or discover new ones in unexpected ways.
The son of the previous Western University president wanted to bicycle in the Landes in June-July, and he wanted to join a group of cyclist so that he would not have to plan the meals and the logistics and he would be part of a secure and accompanied peloton, while a young student from Peru wanted to land in Nice, so that she could go from Nice to Cannes with the marathon: you will organise your own tour, selecting your season and your set of activities to help visualise it for your classmates. The course will present each region so that you may make up your mind as to your own combination of activities on a three-weeks budget. Your Midterm is a take-home exam reviewing what you learnt in class about the six first regions presented.
Goals: learn how to read landscapes and cityscapes as shaped by history, economy and politics; how agriculture, economy and socio-cultural values create local heritage; how the traditions of each region invite their inhabitants and their visitors in their spaces; why regional autonomy persists despite strong national unities; expressions of unity beyond borders; local and even personal imprints. How geography and climate determine cultures or delineate what is possible. A given space functions like an architectural labyrinth: “French regions” are currently determined by common language, laws and government over a patchwork of singularities. Eventually, we hope to foster in you a desire to engage with French regions, and to think about regional autonomy versus unification (think of the use of French language beyond French borders in the EC as a political and monetary federation with reversible membership—cf. Brexit—; or the French regions of such places as Saint Pierre et Miquelon). The continuities and discontinuities of human land use and the landmarks they left behind so that we feel the increments of human evolution over the regions from the times when early human group painted the walls of Lascaux, left traces of their great wars; so that we understand how regions are shaped by geology, weather, biological cataclysms or life resources; or monuments are transformed by love affairs and romantic feuds; or religious coalescence… you will doubtlessly draw your own conclusions and think more acutely about the regions you inhabit yourself.
How you are graded: Presence and participation (questionnaires), 20%; Midterm 40%; one video or automated PowerPoint presentation 40%.
Auditing is not permitted.
