Visions of the Dark Years: World War II and its Legacy in France

FAIN: FV-50109-06

Texas A & M Research Foundation (College Station, TX 77843-0001)
Richard J. Golsan (Project Director: March 2006 to May 2008)

A five-week seminar for fifteen school teachers to study the legacy and memory of World War II in France through literary texts, films, historical sites, and public debates that have to do with that epoch, to be held in Paris, Lyon, Vichy, and Caen, France.

This seminar will study the legacy and memory of World War II in France through site visits to monuments, museums, and other "sites of memory, readings of important literary texts including Camus's The Plague and Marguerite Duras's The War, and screenings and discussions of important films including Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and the Pity, Louis Mall's Lacombe Lucien and Goodyby, Children, Francois Truffaut's The Last Metro, and Claude Berri's Lucie Aubrac. After an initial week in Paris and visits to its WWII monuments and museums, we will visit Lyons, the "Capital of the Resistance"; Vichy, the home of the collaboration is Petain regime, and then spend three weeks in Caen, Normandy, where we will discuss the majority of our readings and films and visit the Normandy landing sites.