Monthly Archives: September 2010

Where did the decadent novel go?

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Lauren Elkin

We’re sort of skipping over Decadence in our class (if you blinked you might have missed my reference to it the other day when we were discussing Baudelaire and Aestheticism), but in case you’re interested in learning more about it, … Continue reading →

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Benjamin

Posted on September 30, 2010 by nca228

“The Commodity economy” of today. Benjamin discusses the end of the phantasmagory world of pre-Hausmanization era and how beauty and individualism has become a commodity. The époque post Hausmanization brought on a revolutionized view of the “interior” and one’s “private … Continue reading →

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Benjamin on Nadja

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Lauren Elkin

“In other respects Breton’s book illustrates well a number of the basic characteristics of this ‘profane illumination.’ He calls Nadja ‘a book with a banging door.’ (In Moscow I lived in a hotel in which nearly all the rooms were … Continue reading →

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Baudelaire and Beauty.

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Katie

Katie Sullivan Response #1 The Painter of Modern Life ; Baudelaire Disclaimer: My logic may be hard to follow towards the end… Not sure if it makes any sense but I would love a response if you can follow it, … Continue reading →

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Photography and Haussmannization

Posted on September 27, 2010 by Lauren Elkin

image:Louis Daguerre | Boulevard du Temple, Paris 3e, 1838 “We are used to seeing photographs as history, as evidence of the past. Roland Barthes, in Camera Lucida, eloquently described the perception of a photograph as a kind of death, a … Continue reading →

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Baudelaire Response take 2

Posted on September 27, 2010 by nca228

Okay so I don’t know if the first one worked or not so here is it again! So as I was writing this response the other day, a lot of topics kept popping up in my mind and as I … Continue reading →

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Sylvia Beach

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Lauren Elkin

For those of you who are joining us tomorrow evening on our tour of two Shakespeare & Companys, you may enjoy reading a few excerpts from Sylvia Beach’s recently collected letters, edited by Keri Walsh and published by Columbia University … Continue reading →

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En grève!

Posted on September 22, 2010 by Lauren Elkin

Just a warning, in case you haven’t heard, dear students, that tomorrow, 23 September 2010, there’s a pretty big mouvement social planned that may slow down your commute to NYU, depending on which trains you take to get there. The … Continue reading →

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Poe, “The Man of the Crowd”

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Lauren Elkin

Here’s the full text of the Poe story we started talking about today.

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Simmel, explicated

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Lauren Elkin

Having a hard time with Simmel? This essay breaks it down nicely: “In the essay—a thoroughly turgid read, but essential—Simmel offers a theory of what happens to people when they live in cities, and how it relates to the ‘resistance … Continue reading →

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