Sunday, September 4

Bienvenue à Paris

Arrive in Paris and transfer to our hotel, centrally located in the sophisticated Right Bank neighborhood of les Grands Boulevards, wide avenues lined with characteristically uniform Empire-style building façades and overhanging iron balconies designed by public administrator Baron Haussmann in the 19th century. Rest or explore our new neighborhood independently this afternoon. There will be a brief, optional walking tour around the hotel to further acquaint you with the quartier (neighborhood) shortly before our welcome reception. The Stanford tour manager will inform you of the specific time earlier that day. Our first "real" group activity will be a welcome reception, orientation briefing and dinner beginning at 6:00 p.m. in our hotel. SOFITEL LE SCRIBE PARIS OPÉRA (R,D)

Monday, September 5

African Americans in Paris

Morning:
This morning we gather for our first lecture by faculty leader Vaughn Rasberry.

After the lecture we take a comprehensive city tour to learn why African Americans, including many of the United States’ greatest Black performers, intellectuals and activists, made their way to Paris and how they integrated into the greater Paris landscape. Discover the connection between African Americans and some of Paris’ most iconic sites, including l'Arc de Triomphe, where, in 1954, the French government invited aviator Eugene Bullard to rekindle the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and l’Église de la Madeleine, the church where Josephine Baker’s funeral was held with full French military honors in 1975. Drive along the Champs-Elysées, location of the eponymous theater in which Baker first performed in 1925 and the Hôtel de Langeac, where Sally Hemmings lived from 1787-1790. See the Jardin du Luxembourg, where Richard Wright took frequent strolls and Loïs Mailou Jones painted en plein air (outdoors) and stop at the sobering Monument to the Memory of General Dumas, and the more traditional monument to his son, author Alexandre Dumas.

Lunch is at a local restaurant.

Afternoon:
This afternoon, we visit the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte at Les Invalides. In order to fit the imperial tomb inside the building, the architect Visconti carried out major excavation work.

Later, enjoy Paris from a different perspective aboard a boat on a leisurely cruise along the Seine. Float past the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, the tiny Île Saint-Louis and beneath several of Paris’ famous bridges, including the iconic Pont Neuf.

Evening:
Dinner this evening is on our own. SOFITEL LE SCRIBE PARIS OPÉRA (B,L)

Tuesday, September 6

Jazz in Paris

Morning:
During World War I, soldiers of the U.S. Army’s all-Black, segregated 369th Infantry Regiment, nicknamed the “Harlem Hellfighters,” spent more time on the front line than any other American unit in France and were the first Americans to be awarded the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military honor. They are also largely credited for introducing jazz music to Paris, where the genre blossomed, particularly in the city’s Montmartre district, which became known as the Harlem of Paris. Originally a rural village of windmills and vineyards, Montmartre managed to retain some of its agrarian characteristics even as it became the urbanized, working-class district whose cheap rents attracted Belle Époque and later Jazz-age bohemians. Explore the neighborhood, still the epicenter of a vibrant jazz scene, and learn about the African-American influence at storied nightclubs like Le Grand Duc, owned by former fighter pilot Eugene Bullard, where Ada “Bricktop” Smith entertained, clarinetist Sidney Bechet played and poet Langston Hughes once washed dishes!

Lunch is at a local restaurant.

Afternoon:
Switching gears, discover the earlier side of Montmartre history at the Musée de Montmartre, located in a 17th-century building that has housed the studios of artists including Auguste Renoir, Suzanne Valadon and Raoul Dufy, and take in sweeping views of the city from the steps of the imposing Romano-Byzantine-style Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.

Late Afternoon/Evening:
Dinner is on our own this evening. SOFITEL LE SCRIBE PARIS OPÉRA (B,L)

Wednesday, September 7

Culinary Paris

Morning:
Vaughn Rasberry's second lecture takes place this morning at the hotel.

Accompanied by a culinary expert, embark on a gastronomic walking tour of the Rue Cler, one of Paris’ most famous market streets. Visit some of the city’s finest boulangeries, patisseries, charcuteries, fromageries and chocolatiers and taste some of the most delicious offerings in the market, which is appropriately located in a neighborhood that borders the Champ de Mars, the carefully landscaped park stretching from the Eiffel Tower to the École Militaire that served as a market garden in the 16th century. The afternoon and evening are at leisure for independent exploration of Paris.

If you are still hungry, lunch today is at your leisure.

Afternoon:
Explore the thoughtfully designed Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, France’s preeminent institution dedicated to the study, preservation and promotion of non-European arts and civilizations. Showcasing the cultural arts of Africa, Oceania, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas, the museum’s vast collection includes items of archaeological, historical and ethnographic interest. Our tour will focus on some of the 70,000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa and will address the history and legacy of French colonialism in Africa and France’s position regarding the restitution of looted cultural heritage. The rest of the day is free to continue visiting the museum independently or perhaps to explore another of Paris’ many attractions on our own. SOFITEL LE SCRIBE PARIS OPÉRA (B)

Thursday, September 8

Africa in Paris

Morning:
Attend Vaughn Rasberry's third lecture this morning.

Leave touristic Paris behind and take a walking tour through the vibrant working-class neighborhood of the Goutte d'Or. As you stroll though this lively district, browsing through an open-air market, examining stalls selling spices and other imported foodstuffs and visiting shops selling African and Middle Eastern fashions, explore the history of immigration from France's former colonies, its social and political connotations and the coexistence of the neighborhood's multi-ethnic residents.

Afternoon:
Enjoy lunch at a restaurant featuring African specialties.

Late Afternoon/Evening:
Join an African-American expat musician for a walking tour of the Left Bank’s Saint-Germain-des Prés neighborhood that became a popular center of African-American culture and jazz after World War II. See locations associated with a new generation of jazz musicians including Bud Powell, Lester Young, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as well as famous “literary cafés” Le Flore and Les Deux Magots, where James Baldwin, Chester Himes and Richard Wright continued the tradition of intellectual expat patronage established by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Pasos and James Joyce.

Conclude the evening at a dinner hosted by a longtime African-American resident of Paris, followed by a performance of jazz, song and spoken-word poetry, by African-American expat artist Ursuline Kairson. SOFITEL LE SCRIBE PARIS OPÉRA (B, L, D)

Friday, September 9

Literary Paris

Morning:
Meet award-winning writer, Jake Lamar, to learn about his experiences as an African-American author living in Paris and discover the history of Paris’ writers of African descent. Take a walking tour through the Quartier Latin to discover the roles played by African-American and Afro-French intellectuals in Paris’ literary history. Visit the Panthéon, an 18th-century mausoleum where some of France’s most distinguished citizens, including novelist Alexandre Dumas, are interred, and the Sorbonne, one of the first universities in the world, where former enslaved American, scholar and author Anna Cooper earned a doctorate in 1924. Other prominent African-American students include historian Carter G. Woodson and the many World War II veterans who were able to use education benefits from the G.I. bill to study in Paris when U.S. universities either discouraged or altogether prohibited admission to Blacks. See where Richard Wright attended the first Congress of Black Writers & Artists in 1956 and the home in which the author lived. Learn about the Revue du Monde Noir, a collaborative, bilingual, multiracial literary magazine founded in 1931 by Paulette Nardal of Martinique and Leo Sajous of Haiti, whose aim was to encourage creative dialogue among and across the African diaspora, and the Négritude literary movement founded in Paris in 1934 by Martinique-born poet Aimé Césaire, future Sengalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor and French Guiana’s Léon Damas who explored the expression of a Pan-African worldview under colonization.

Afternoon:
After lunch at a local restaurant, we will attend a presentation by Kryssandra Heslop co-founder of a Paris-based nonprofit called Soul Food. Kryssandra was born in New York to a Panamanian-Jamaican father and an Italian-American mother. After studying psychology, Italian and art history at UT Austin, she lived in Panamá and Italy. Then almost 11 years ago, she relocated to France and earned a Master's degree in International Relations and Diplomacy. It was then that she started researching and writing about issues that impact young migrants and refugees. In 2018 she co-founded Soul Food, which uses art and culture to help integrate young migrants, refugees and unaccompanied minors as well as advocating for their rights and access to education, safe accommodation and technology.

The afternoon is free for independent exploration, perhaps beginning with a browse at the nearby Présence Africaine, a legendary bookstore and publishing house that grew out of the cultural, political and literary journal of the same name, which was a significant voice in the Pan-Africanist movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. SOFITEL LE SCRIBE PARIS OPÉRA (B,L)

Saturday, September 10

Paris Noir

Morning:
Gather this morning for our final lecture with Professor Rasberry.

Attend a private screening of the 2016 documentary, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light that explores the relationship between Paris and African-American expatriates in the decades following World War I, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers.

Afternoon:
Lunch and the rest of the afternoon are free for us to independently check off some of the sites or shops left on our bucket lists. Climb the Eiffel Tower, see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre or the collection of Impressionist paintings at the Musée d’Orsay, or choose to simply while away the rest of the day absorbing Paris’ storied café culture and shopping!

Evening:
Gather this evening to celebrate the culmination of our experience with a festive farewell reception and dinner at our hotel. SOFITEL LE SCRIBE PARIS OPÉRA (B,R,D)

Sunday, September 11

Paris / U.S.

Transfer to the airport for flights home. Bon retour! (B)