Landscapes of Dissent,
Horizons of Possibility
 

At a time when the world can seem increasingly out of whack, this course asks some deceptively simple questions: how have ordinary people responded to major historical transformations, and what happens when people come together to defend the places, livelihoods, and ways of life they value? What new ideas do people imagine amid these periods of transformation, and how have people worked together to sustain the places that sustain them? We will explore how people have wrestled with these questions at pivital times in French history, and how their struggles have shaped the possibilities for the future we imagine today. Following a path from Brittany to Paris, the course focuses on the solidarities, forms of collective action, and imaginative possibilities that emerge when the places people call home—and the ways of life rooted in them—come under pressure.

Brittany is a region where dissent over work, land, gender and the environment have challenged the existing order while opening possibilities for thinking differently about collective life. From the feminist striking sardine workers of Douarnenez and the peasant mobilizations of May ’68 in Nantes to the woman-led anti-nuclear movement at Plogoff and the ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, we will explore how people have come together to defend livelihoods, cultures, and landscapes, and at times, to imagine and experiment with alternatives. Along the way, we will encounter smaller Breton port and island communities whose distinctive economies, cultures, and relationships to place invite us to consider different ways of living together.

In Paris, our course will focus on Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, two neighborhoods with long histories of political and social unrest, from the Commune of 1871 to the student and worker protests of May 1968. We’ll walk the streets where barricades went up, ideas collided, and where people challenged the political and social orders of their time.

Throughout the course, the places we go to will be more than a backdrop. Learning will move beyond the classroom through fishing harbours at dawn, across working farmland, along rugged Atlantic cliffs and tidal beaches, onto windswept islands, and through the streets, markets, and gatherings of villages, towns, and cities. We will move through these sites mindfully as we walk along Brittany’s coastlines, sail its waters, and discover its islands and beaches, considering how geography and place shape collective life, work, gender relations, culture, and our relationships with the natural world. The landscape becomes something we inhabit: something we move through, depend upon, and share with others.