This dissertation examines the transformation of the French built environment alongside medical discourses of the body in the early 19th century, arguing that emerging theories on health and hygiene comprised a politically charged subtext in the design of spaces where gender and class identities were formed. Following the military defeats that led to the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire, fears over national decline spurred medical thought on the regeneration of French citizens. The ensuing debates about the body and hygiene gave rise to new architectural programs - such as gymnasiums, swimming schools, and public gardens - where emergent practices for rehabilitating the bourgeois body, both male and female, were implemented. I trace the translation of these spatial forms and practices across a range of military, educational, and recreational settings, to analyze the role of architecture in shaping 19th-century embodiments and expressions of gender, class, and citizenship.

No description available.

This dissertation interrogates gender as revealed in the lives of women in Paris from the declaration of a republic on 4 September 1870 through the violent demise of the Paris Commune on 28 May 1871. Centering gender at the analytical hub of public and private space exposes the disruption to these traditional categories, provided by the siege and Commune. This study argues against traditional histories of the Commune that have reduced women's visibility during the preceding months of the Franco-Prussian War and the four-and-one-half month siege of Paris. With the advent of the Commune on 18 March 1871, working women often continued their previously-acceptable activities of the siege, rather than suddenly asserting themselves as "wild-eyed viragoes" during the revolutionary Commune. To verify this, the first two chapters cover 4 September 1870 through the siege's conclusion on 28 January 1871; then, three chapters investigate women's Commune-era verbal assertions, political pressure tactics, and military presence. Combined, these chapters demonstrate that prioritizing the role of gender in the private and public lives of working women brings to life their substantive contributions to the radical reordering of socio-economic norms within the "working man's revolution" of the Paris Commune.Employing interdisciplinary theory, this work analyzes autobiographical experiences of Victorine Malenfant Rouchy and other women, as well as the production of siege- and Commune-era discourse more broadly. It argues against prior historians of the era who relied on particular, often incomplete, sets of documents for their conclusions, which have reduced women's significance to a small group of activists. Two recent works have contributed analyses of gendered representation and three women leaders, but have not assessed less prominent, sometimes anonymous, female residents of Paris who did not necessarily appear in conventional record sets. A range of documents therefore reveals women's contributions from the genesis of the Commune through its annihilation during its final, "Bloody Week," in which government troops specifically targeted women. Investigating the attention paid to women's bodies during that last week of May 1871, when somewhere near 30,000 people died, raises the issue of gendered violence against women, a topic that remains underanalyzed.

Notre-Dame de Paris 1482, by Victor Hugo, is a work which collects many genres. This poetry however gives all signs of clumsiness (let us think of Gringoire's play or of Quasimodo's "verses"), of vulgarity (the language used by the rogues, Jehan Frollo's drinking songs), of analphabetism (a condition shared by Esmeralda, Quasimodo, and "le peuple"), of the secular, even more of the profane (the heresy and anticlericalism present in the novel). The poetry of Notre-Dame de Paris is scattered (dissipated) into a number of under-texts which appear to perturb the rules of "good" literature. / A first part of this thesis examines a few characteristics of the writing of Hugo: its tendency toward a certain declassification, as well as some of its most important aesthetics, such as the grotesque and the excessiveness. A second section is an analysis of different aspects of Gringoire's morality, songs of Jehan and Esmeralda, Quasimodo's "poem"--these aspects being studied through the element of locality and the theme of the volatile.

Ce portrait de Stendhal tracé par lui-même dans La Vie de Henri Brulard, offre, probablement, le cadre le plus exact où placer le futur écrivain à son arrivée à Paris. Henri Beyle a 16 ans et demi lorsqu'il part, le 30 octobre 1799, de son Grenoble natal. Préparé par une forte éducation mathématique, enhardi par les résultats brillants qu'il a obtenus aux examens de l'Ecole Centrale de Grenoble, il arrive dans la capitale sous le prétexte de se présenter au concours d'entrée à l'Ecole Polytechnique. [...]

This dissertation analyses the endurance of colonial logics of assimilation and cultural segregation in contemporary urban France by connecting them with their origins in colonial Algeria. French urban planning and policy in Algeria emphasized the capacity of the urban environment to establish the cultural supremacy of imperial France, to ‘evolve’ Algerians toward French lifestyles and civility, and to provide stable and controllable social environments. The migration en masse of Algerians to France following the Second World War, and in the context of the Algerian war of independence, prompted the creation of new state institutions in France to house, integrate, monitor and police France’s purportedly suspect, hostile immigrant population. This paper argues the refraction of this colonial apparatus during the post-war period has rippled into the contemporary era, posing significant obstacles to social cohesion between immigrants – and their descendents – and the white ethnic majority in France.

No description available.

No description available.

The suburb of Belleville is situated on the north-eastern outskirts of inner Paris. Its particular blend of social strata, race and architecture has made it a site of interest for historians, writers and artists since the Middle Ages. Thanks in part to the phenomenal success of Daniel Pennac’s six tome Malaussène series, published towards the end of the 20th century and situated in Belleville, the site has continued to enjoy a privileged status among the historical and cultural precincts of Paris. The representation of Belleville in the written and spoken word has a long history, part of which has been told, although in somewhat piecemeal fashion to date. Existing research may be divided into 3 categories, corresponding to the disciplines of history, sociology and literature. Historical studies are extensive and tend to support the suburb’s reputation as a site of revolution and social unrest. The sociological studies focus on immigration to the suburb and on the consequences of its physical transformation over the last half of the 20th century. The overall image presented by sociologists is one of a cosmopolitan suburb whose inhabitants manage to co-exist peacefully despite the multicultural mix; Belleville’s reputation as a melting pot success story sits at odds with that of its image as a centre of rebellion. Literature-based research conducted into the suburb is more sketchy; Belleville’s association with the noir genre and its inherent illicit elements also contrasts with the previous observations. If the existing studies present various pictures of historical and contemporary Belleville, they do not, however, give a comprehensive image of the suburb, nor do they provide an analysis of the role of Belleville in the noir genre, with particular reference to the Malaussène series. I have thus undertaken a multidisciplinary study of the suburb, with the objective of establishing links between the history, sociology and the literature of Belleville, of gaining an understanding of the function of Belleville as a setting for detective fiction and of offering a new explanation of the success of Pennac’s Malaussène series, by relating it to his representation of Belleville. The three focus areas of my research are its history from the Middle Ages until the end of the 20th century, its diverse representations in literature and popular culture, and its connection to a particular literary genre: the noir. The originality of my project lies in the method created to categorise existing research. Belleville rouge presents a view of the site as historically antiauthoritarian in its attempts to promote social justice. Belleville rose incorporates those studies which emphasise the suburb to varying degrees as a utopia, a model of social harmony or a centre of joyful festivities. Belleville noir focuses on the choice of the suburb as backdrop for the noir genre in literature and film; a hub of transgression and criminal activity, the antithesis of the positive space presented in the second category. The first part of my research project looks at the history of Belleville, the changing nature of its borders, which differ greatly from the administrative division according to author and historian, and the creation of a collective Belleville identity. Part two examines the representations of Belleville in literature and popular culture from the Middle Ages until the year 2000, and furthermore attempts to determine to what extent these cultural representations correspond to the suburb’s history. The third section deals with the role of Belleville in noir film and literature. If a single image corresponding to the décor of the neo-polar genre begins to emerge from the representations of Belleville by the film directors and various authors whose texts make up our corpus, this image differs greatly from the nostalgic one offered by Daniel Pennac; his representation of the suburb is hence treated separately. It is this strong sense of attachment to, and identification with, Belleville that is underlined by Pennac in his Malaussène series. Setting himself apart from his néo-polar contemporaries, Pennac draws heavily on all of the three faces of Belleville: the rouge, the rose and the noir. His refusal to adhere strictly to the néo-polar genre and his corresponding tendency to borrow from other genres such as the fairy tale, has resulted in a fusion of the real and the mythological which has engendered in his series a streak of optimism not found in the works of his contemporaries. Pennac draws on the history and traditions of the suburb to thus present an original view of contemporary Belleville as a peace-loving, cohesive community. If we accept that the cultural memory of a site is dictated in part by its inhabitants, and hence is in constant evolution, outlasting its physical appearance, Pennac’s role of guardian of the cultural memory of Belleville may extend to that of the cultural memory of the French nation. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2009

Zugl.: Bremen, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2005