Selected authors and readings

This course follows French and Francophone writing on the United States from the early nineteenth century to the present, with a particular focus on texts shaped by travel and firsthand experience. Taught in English, the course combines texts available in English translation with selected readings in the original French.

• Chateaubriand, Travels in America (1827)

• Alexis de Tocqueville, Fifteen Days in the Wilderness (1861)

• Georges Duhamel, America the Menace (1930)

• Robert Aron and Arnaud Dandieu, Le Cancer américain (1932)

• Louis-Ferdinand Céline, American chapters from Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

• Jean-Paul Sartre, selected essays from Situations

• Simone de Beauvoir, “An Existentialist Looks at Americans” (1947) and America Day by Day (1948)

• Léopold Sédar Senghor, “À New York” (1956)

• Serge Gainsbourg, “New York U.S.A.” (1964)

• Edgar Morin, Journal de Californie (1970)

• Claude Lévi-Strauss, “New York post-préfiguratif” (1979)

• Jean Baudrillard, America (1986)

• Claude Nougaro, “Nougayork” (1987)

• Laure Murat, Ceci n’est pas une ville (2016)

• Alain Mabanckou, Rumeurs d’Amérique (2020)

• Chantal Thomas, Journal d’Arizona (2024)

• Alain Damasio, Vallée du silicium (2024)