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Distributed for Reaktion Books

Parisian Fields

Perhaps no world city has so many resonances, on so many levels, as Paris. Cafe society, demi-monde, the intellectual life, film-makers and writers... Paris has fragmented socially, sexually, intellectually and linguistically into many fields. Parisian Fields sets out to investigate some of these.

The writers investigate how Paris has been both seen and shaped by tourist guides; how its topography has been represented and allegorized by film-makers like Godard, Clair, Vigo and Renoir; how the city has responded to "new" Parisians – for example Afro-American musicians and dancers such as Josephine Baker – and to previously marginalized Parisians – gays and women.

Literary analysis, film, social and gender theory, perspectives on urbanism; here are many provocative and innovative views of the open field of Paris, which will appeal to anyone interested in French cultural and literary studies – or just in the City of Light herself.

With essays by Roger Clark, Nicholas Hewitt, Jon Kear, Tom Conley, Michael Sheringham, Alex Hughes, Adrian Rifkin, Belinda Jack, Verena Andermatt Conley and Marc Augé.

Distribution by the University of Chicago Press only to customers in the USA and Canada. Customers elsewhere should visit the UK website of Reaktion Books.


208 pages | 6.125 x 9.25 | © 1997

Critical Views

Geography: Urban Geography

History: European History


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Table of Contents

Photographic Acknowledgements
Notes on the Editor and Contributors
Introduction - Michael Sheringham
1. Threading the Maze: Nineteenth-century Guides for British Travellers to Paris - Roger Clark
2. Shifting Cultural Centres in Twentieth-century Paris - Nicholas Hewitt
3. Vénus noire: Josephine Baker and the Parisian Music-hall - Jon Kear
4. ’Le Cinéaste de la vie moderne’: Paris as Map in Film, 1924-34 - Tom Conley
5. City Space, Mental Space, Poetic Space: Paris in Breton, Benjamin and Réda - Michael Sheringham
6. The City and the Female Autograph - Alex Hughes
7. The Poetics of Space Rewritten: From Renaud Camus to the Gay City Guide - Adrian Rifkin
8. ’Mirages de Paris’: Paris in Francophone Writing - Belinda Jack
9. Electronic Paris: From Place of Election to Place of Ejection - Verena Andermatt Conley
10. Paris and the Ethnography of the Contemporary World - Marc Augé
References
Bibliography
Index

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