Letter from the Professor

In this course on Parisian literature and visual culture, students learn about new approaches to art and literature that came about in nineteenth-century Paris, when artists began to see the everyday life of their rapidly changing city as fodder for artistic creation. Impressionists like Manet, Renoir, and Caillebotte, and writers like Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola, and Colette depicted what they observed all around town–on the bustling boulevard, in newly constructed cafés and restaurants, in recently renovated parks, and at the theater. They loved to capture life in motion and were very much influenced by the new technology of the camera. Over the course of the Fall ‘21 semester, a dozen Stern students similarly learned to treat New York City as a similar source of inspiration and to become artists of everyday life. With a private @ Instagram account, they tried to see through nineteenth-century eyes in order to capture the unexpected beauty in the most seemingly mundane aspects of our city. Please enjoy their discoveries!