PIPT 315 Let’s Eat: Food in 1880’s Paris

Division of Liberal Arts

3 credits 45.0 hours
300 level undergraduate course

Our present-day restaurant developed in Paris in the mid-1700s. By the 1870s, Paris had been remolded-cafes, dance halls, and restaurants abounded-and the capital included Les Halles, the largest covered food-market in the world. During a time when countries such as England began to transition to large-scale farming practices, the production techniques of French labor-class farmers hindered the need for modern farming operations. On Paris’s outskirts and in the country, small-scale farmers produced much of the country’s food supply. Through Émile Zola’s novel The Belly of Paris (1873), the respective restaurant and landscape imagery of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Émile Bernard, and Paul Signac, and dazzling Parisian nightlife depicted by Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, students will explore the dichotomy between labor and luxury amid the socialist politics that arose in the early 1880s. Students will also consider current sustainable farming methods and contemporary artists who critically engage with our food culture.

Prerequisites HUMS course

This course is not repeatable for credit.