Unit name | Around Cubism |
---|---|
Unit code | FREN30096 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | H/6 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Professor. Harrow |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Department of French |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This interdisciplinary unit explores representations of city space, travel, objects, mechanicity, otherness, subjectivity, iconoclasm, and the new media before and during the First World War, a period characterized by experimentalism in the arts. We focus on how writers (Jarry, Apollinaire, Cendrars), composers and choreographers (Stravinsky, Diaghilev), and visual artists (Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay) constructed distinctive visions of the everyday, or, indeed, resisted material modernity in order to explore the autonomous space of the text or the canvas, the dance or the musical score. This unit aims to provide students with the historical background and critical vocabulary necessary to make an informed reading of selected early-twentieth-century texts in French, and assess critically related visual material. Students will develop practices for 'reading' both textual and visual material, and gain an understanding of the problems associated with the act of reading across genres (theatre, poetry) and across media (painting, photography, dance, music).
Aims:
Successful students will:
Two seminar hours per week across one teaching block (22 contact hours)
One of the following:
a) A written assignment of 3000 words and a two hour exam (50% each)
b) A written assignment of 3000 words (25%) and a three hour exam (75%)
c) One written assignment of 6000 words (or equivalent)
d) Two written assignments of 3000 words (50% each)
e) One oral presentation (25%) plus one written assignment of 1500 words (25%) plus one written assignment of 3000 words (50%)